British Telecom pay £1.75million for call-centre fraud

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British Telecom has paid £1.75million in compensation for cheating taxpayers in a call-centre fraud.

Over six years its staff made more than a million "false" calls to ensure performance targets were met under a £1billion-plus contract to handle calls from Ministry of Defence bases.

As an incentive for BT to answer calls quickly, a time-specific bonus was built into the contract.

The fraud involved staff phoning themselves so that more calls were recorded as having been answered under the time allowed. Computerised '"autodiallers" were also used.

The fraud was only exposed when the contract with the MoD was renewed and led to five managers losing their jobs.

The £1.75million paid by BT to the MoD to settle the dispute includes £1.2million to cover the cost of the fake calls and of the MoD's own inquiry.

Details had been secret but were revealed in a BT memo to the MoD released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Four call centres - in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, St Helens, Lancashire, Kettering, Northamptonshire, and Dumbarton in Scotland - were involved in the MoD contract.