A criminal defence solicitor and two legal associates plotted to cheat the legal aid fund by ruthlessly inflating and forging every possible expense, a jury was told last week.

Solicitor Reuben Ewujowoh, 44, principal at Rae & Co in Southwark, London, and co-defendants legal assistant Lloyd McDonald, 68, of Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, and costs draftsman Robert Odong, 33, of Islington, London, all deny two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud.

Ewujowoh faces one alternative count of fraud, which he denies.

It is alleged that the three defendants plotted together in 2007/08 to commit legal aid fraud in two separate cases.

The jury was told that the fraud was exposed by chance when the same legal aid determining officer happened to be working on claims for both trials.

In one of the cases, Ewujowoh is alleged to have claimed a total of £163,769, more than double any other solicitor on the case, even though he had been instructed for up to nine months less than the other lawyers.

‘These three defendants all had a financial incentive to maximise the claims, and in a clearly fraudulent scheme they massaged and amended every category of expense claimable in their financial favour,’ prosecutor Janet Weeks told Croydon Crown Court.

The trial continues and is expected to last around one month.