JUDGE David Miller did not mince his words. Delivering sentence at Woolwich Crown Court in London, he told the defendants they had placed themselves “at the epicentre” of a fraud that was only made possible because one of them held a position of trust inside one of the world’s most recognisable public transport networks. The case before him, he declared, represented the worst data breach in the history of Transport for London – an institution that moves more than three million passengers a day and employs tens of thousands of workers across the British capital.
Luciana Akanbi, 38, and her husband Femi Akanbi, 51, were each sentenced to three years and nine months in prison after being convicted of orchestrating a sophisticated tax rebate fraud scheme using stolen personal data harvested from the TfL HR system between September 2021 and January 2022. The scheme defrauded HM Revenue and Customs of over £433,000, with total fraudulent claims submitted approaching £650,000.
“This fraud was only possible because you, Luciana Akanbi, had access to this personal, private information. You had been colleagues with some of these people who were extremely badly let down.”
Judge David Miller, Woolwich Crown Court
INSIDE THE SCHEME: TRUST WEAPONISED
Luciana Akanbi joined Transport for London in 2017. By 2021, she was working as a business service call adviser in the HR department – a role that granted her access to the private records of colleagues. According to prosecutors, she exploited that access to harvest the sensitive personal data of 107 TfL employees, including passport details, National Insurance numbers, and bank account information.
Of those 107 records accessed, the data of at least 40 individuals was weaponised to lodge 139 false self-assessment tax rebate claims with HMRC. The claims were submitted using at least 38 electronic devices, prosecutors told the court – a detail that speaks to the deliberate, operational scale of the enterprise. Prosecutor Andrew Evans told Woolwich Crown Court that the scheme was “sophisticated in nature, required significant planning and involved a large number of victims.”
Femi Akanbi was identified by the prosecution as an “important conduit” between the data his wife obtained and the fraudulent claims that followed. Judge Miller rejected any suggestion that one spouse bore significantly less responsibility than the other. “Mrs Akanbi was under pressure from you,” the judge told Femi Akanbi directly. “You are equally culpable for the abuse of trust at her place of work.”
THE MONEY TRAIL: LAUNDERED AND GONE
Evidence presented in court showed that approximately £66,000 was traced directly to Femi Akanbi’s bank account, while £16,000 was linked to Luciana’s. But Judge Miller was unequivocal that the couple’s actual benefit from the scheme exceeded what the account records showed. He told them bluntly: “I am quite satisfied your gains were other than that. You were jointly responsible for not only the intended loss but the actual loss to the public purse.”
The proceeds were rapidly moved through a complex money laundering network, prosecutors said. More than £50,000 was channelled into gambling accounts. The court heard that Femi Akanbi had developed a gambling addiction after being hospitalised during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period during which the family had fallen into serious financial difficulty. That context was noted in mitigation, but did not persuade the court toward leniency.
On the question of confiscation, Judge Miller was characteristically blunt. The stolen money, he said, was “gone.” He made no financial recovery order, telling the court: “I am told you have no means. I cannot get blood from a stone.”
“TFL suffered its worst-ever data breach. The organisation was forced to overhaul its internal systems following the incident.”
Judge David Miller, on the institutional damage caused
DEFLECTION, DENIAL AND THE COUSIN WHO WASN’T
In an attempt to divert investigators’ attention following her arrest, Luciana Akanbi – a mother of three – suggested to HMRC officials that her husband’s cousin, who works in the IT industry, may have been responsible for accessing TfL’s systems. The court rejected that account entirely. Judge Miller found that the fraud was only possible because of Luciana’s privileged internal access, which she abused over a sustained period.
The judge’s findings underscored the devastating human consequences for the colleagues whose identities were stolen. “That is damaging; to have your credit ratings impacted, to deal with HMRC, and to have to rearrange your finances,” he said. “There was immense damage to third parties.”
TFL RESPONDS: SYSTEMS OVERHAULED
Transport for London’s Head of Counter-Fraud and Corruption, Richard Mullings, welcomed the sentences. “We take any cases of fraud extremely seriously and welcome the court’s sentencing of these two individuals,” he said in a statement issued following sentencing. Judge Miller had noted separately that TfL was forced to conduct a wholesale overhaul of its internal data systems in the wake of the breach – institutional remediation that carries its own considerable cost beyond the direct financial losses.
ANALYSIS: AN INSIDER THREAT THAT DEMANDS A SYSTEMIC RESPONSE
The Akanbi case is not merely a criminal prosecution. It is a case study in the systemic vulnerability that arises when personal data aggregation meets inadequate access controls in large public-sector institutions. The breach did not require a sophisticated hacker, a state-level intrusion, or an elaborate technical exploit. It required one disgruntled or financially desperate employee with routine HR access and a co-conspirator willing to monetise it.
That TfL – an organisation of significant public trust – maintained systems that allowed a single employee to access over 100 colleagues’ full personal profiles, including passports, National Insurance numbers and bank details, without triggering automated alerts or controls, is a failure of data governance as much as it is a criminal act by the Akanbis. Judge Miller’s observation that TfL was subsequently forced into systemic reform is, in effect, a tacit acknowledgement that the institutional architecture made such a breach easier than it should have been.
The racial dimension of the reporting on this case also warrants sober reflection. Across much of the British and Nigerian press, coverage has led heavily with the couple’s nationality. That framing, while not inherently wrong when factually accurate, demands consistency – a standard rarely applied with similar vigour to white British defendants in comparable fraud prosecutions. The crime here is serious. The sentence is proportionate. Neither fact requires a nationality-first editorial framing to carry its full weight.
Both defendants face potential deportation proceedings, a matter the judge noted without ruling upon. “You may be liable for deportation,” Miller said, “but that is not for me.” That determination will now fall to the Home Office – a process that adds yet another dimension to a case that exposes, at multiple levels, the consequences of institutional trust abused.
