“Cheating honest workers out of employment”: The confiscation of wages as proceeds of crime – by Maayan Niezna

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In response to some work-related criminal offences, sanctions under UK law include not only fines and imprisonment, but also the confiscation of wages as proceeds of crime. Two such contexts are ‘illegal working’ by migrants (an offence under the Immigration Act 2016), and frauds committed by workers, including ‘CV fraud’.

Formally, one can see the rationale for confiscating workers’ wages under such circumstances. If there is a criminal prohibition on working without a valid visa, or if someone committed a criminal offence such as fraud against their employer, and was later paid for their work, there is a causal link between the wages and the crime. But for the criminal act, they would not be paid. They are, at least formally, comparable to the proceeds from other criminal offences, such as selling drugs or stolen goods. Confiscating proceeds of crime is generally seen as an important policy response, deterring potential offenders, and making sure that ‘crime should not pay’.

In a recent article exploring the confiscation of wages from migrants working illegally, I reject this formalistic approach, and explain why it is morally and legally wrong, and practically harmful. I show why confiscation is pragmatically problematic, leads to exploitation, and violates workers’ dignity. Most importantly, it ignores the nature of work as a relationship and conceptualises it instead as a resource controlled by the state and employers. Such an understanding of work as a relationship is reflected, for example, in referring to illegal working as “cheat[ing] honest workers out of employment”, in the words of the former Home Secretary. As I show in the article, similar sentiments were also expressed in judgments concerning the confiscation of migrants’ wages.

In this blog, I build on that article’s argument to consider in depth the question of confiscating wages in the less sympathetic cases of fraud committed against employers, and especially CV fraud.  I will show that even in these less sympathetic cases, the confiscation of wages is still problematic and reflects a misunderstanding of work. 

In situations of CV fraud, people obtain employment by claiming skills and professional experience they do not have. Such was the case of Jon Andrewes, a social worker who applied for a managerial position as a Chief Executive Officer at St Margaret’s Hospice. Andrewes included on his CV academic degrees he was not awarded and positions he never held, including in organisations he never worked for. He was offered and accepted the job and was paid an initial annual salary of £75,000. He held this job for more than ten years and was considered a good employee. For a part of this period, he also held remunerated office-holder positions in NHS trusts, again based on his fabricated CV.

After the fraud was discovered, Andrewes faced criminal charges and pleaded guilty to one count of obtaining a pecuniary advantage and two counts of fraud. He was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, and the Crown sought to confiscate his wages under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Andrewes appealed against the confiscation order. The Court of Appeal accepted some of his arguments, and the case was appealed again to the Supreme Court.

Andrewes’s case is an interesting one for considering the core principles underlying the confiscation of wages. In some important legal and moral ways, it’s a simple case, enabling a clear assessment of the wrong of confiscating wages, and the wrongs such confiscations are meant to address. First, Andrewes’s job was not in a regulated sector like healthcare, driving, or legal practice. He did not endanger the public by working in a role for which he lacked formal qualifications or a licence.

Second, unlike many migrants working in the UK, Andrewes did not face the hard choice between a criminal offence and destitution. Many migrants working without a visa (or committing ‘illegal working’) work at low-paid, dirty and demanding jobs that workers with better opportunities reject. Migrants might work illegally because this is the only way to afford the basic needs of themselves and members of their families.

Andrewes’s job before the CV fraud, on the other hand, paid over £54,000 annually. I imagine at least some of the readers of this text would consider this a very good salary. He did not need to commit fraud to avoid destitution. He did not even need to commit fraud to secure a job paying notably beyond the living wage. This previous salary was important for the Supreme Court’s analysis of what part of his wages should be confiscated. The Crown sought to confiscate Andrewes’s entire recoverable wages. Andrewes, on the other hand, claimed that “any confiscation order would here be disproportionate” [43]. The Court identified a middle way. It used his older salary of £54,000, for his legitimately obtained job, as a benchmark, identifying the difference between it and his new salary as the benefit of his fraud.

Another reason I consider Andrewes a simple case is related to the underlying concern of CV fraud. Job descriptions and personal specifications serve a purpose. At least in theory, these are the requirements someone needs to meet to be able to perform the job well, and lying about them suggests a worker would not be able to do so. In Andrewes, the fraudulent act initiating the employment relationship was distinct from the performance of the work itself. There was no dispute that Andrewes performed his duties satisfactorily. As the Court of Appeal noted, he “had given full value for the remuneration he had received”. In other words, the sole wrongdoing in his case was the initial fraud. The comparable case would be one of someone using illegitimate means to establish a trading relationship, but adequately supplying the goods or services once awarded (see R v Waya, [34]).

In other words, the only harm resulting from Andrewes’s fraud was the dishonesty itself, violating the social values of honesty and truth. Potentially, his act harmed others, more qualified for the job, but this was not argued in the case.

A case of different type of fraud, longer lasting, and arguably more harmful, was that of R v Asplin and others. Senior managers in an insurance company called DAS established a company (‘Medreport’) which provided DAS with medical reports. They hid their interest in Medreport and used their position to ensure favourable terms benefiting it, at the expense of DAS, which employed them. They were convicted of conspiracy to defraud, and the Crown sought confiscation of several million pounds, including their salaries at DAS. The Court of Appeal ruled that the defendants’ salaries could not be calculated as part of DAS’s loss for the purpose of compensation: the company would have had to employ someone for these roles and pay them, and it gained some benefit from their work.

Offsetting the value of work against confiscation

The question from Asplin, of benefit from work offset against the wages to be confiscated, was considered in several cases. In Andrewes, the Crown argued he could not offset the value of services performed against the fraud’s benefit. However, the Court rejected this position, finding the Crown’s approach suited illegal goods sales (such as drugs or arms), but not cases where otherwise lawful employment followed fraudulent inducement.

The Supreme Court previously ruled (in R v Waya) that when a defendant has fully restored the victim’s loss, requiring payment of the same sum under a confiscation order does not serve the legislation’s purpose of removing criminal gains. Rather, it imposes an additional financial penalty and is therefore disproportionate. It further suggested that when the defendant used deception to induce another to trade with him, but otherwise gave full value for the goods or services obtained, a punishment is warranted, but confiscation might be disproportionate. In Andrewes, the Court noted:

“If the confiscation order did not reflect a deduction for the value of the services rendered, while requiring the defendant to repay the net earnings, the order would constitute double recovery or what can most accurately be labelled “double disgorgement”. Double disgorgement goes beyond disgorgement and constitutes a penalty. That would be disproportionate” [41].

This position can be contrasted with the court’s position in R v Carter (2006). There, the Court of Appeal consideredthe case of a gangmaster who supplied farms and companies with the labour of undocumented migrants. Two challenges were made to confiscation. The first was raised by the gangmaster himself, who supplied the labour. The Court considered his role in a criminal enterprise to supply ‘illegal labour’, and rejected his argument that the wages paid to workers should be deducted from the ‘benefit’ he gained, and that could therefore be confiscated. The second challenge was raised by Denis Lyashkov, who obtained work by using false documents claiming he had a right to work in the UK. He claimed, like Andrewes later would, that his wages were paid as a result of performing the work rather than as a result of the fraudulent use of documents. The Court rejected this challenge too. It disagreed that the advantage from the misrepresentation can be distinguished from the advantage of performing the work. The deception was deemed the operative cause of obtaining the benefit and continued for the duration of the work.

In Andrewes, the Court of Appeal argued that work performed by immigrants without the right to work in the UK may justify an exception to the rule that restoration should be lawful. The Court of Appeal noted that in some cases, the employer of said workers may have been “entirely indifferent as to the employee’s status” [95]. However, this position was reversed in the Supreme Court. The latter’s judgment explicitly excluded from its distinction between the initial fraudulent act and the performance of the work itself cases of illegal working by migrant workers, now covered under s.24B of the Immigration Act 1971. The Court considered these as ‘criminal enterprise cases’, where: “in deciding on the benefit from the criminal conduct, no deduction is to be made for the expenses of running the criminal enterprise and, in deciding on proportionality, the provision of illegal labour does not constitute restoration of value”(R v Andrewes, [37]).

I disagree. While the causal relationship between fraud and wages is clear, confiscation is concerned with value, and the value of work performed should not be ignored. It is hard to imagine e.g. farm work (the type performed in Carter) where the worker’s status has an impact on the value of the produce planted or picked. The fraud might be punishable for violating social values of truth and honesty reflected in criminal law norms, but it did not have an impact on the value produced by the workers. This would also be true in other cases.

Value, harm and confiscation

The circumstances in which work is obtained or performed illegally, and the distinction between the initial misrepresentation (or other offence resulting in access to work) and the performance of the work itself also help us to determine when, if ever, wages should be confiscated. The different facts of these cases and the legal, moral and practical considerations they raise might lead one to ask whether confiscation of wages is ever justified.

The courts’ distinction between fraud and illegal working suggested that migrants who may have worked to afford basic necessities, and whose employers may have been aware of their undocumented status, might have their entire wages confiscated. At the same time, well-paid managers may keep a significant portion of their salary. Confiscation is not meant to be a retributive measure, but it is still a criminal law sanction and a de facto punishment. If motivation or circumstances were relevant, it would seem unusual for criminal law to punish those acting out of destitution worse than those acting out of greed. Even if the circumstances of the former fell short of the legal standard of duress by circumstances, they may attract understandable sympathy.

Such sympathy for the perpetrators may be one reason to reject confiscation, but what about less sympathetic cases? Should Andrewes keep the profit resulting from his CV fraud, and should Asplin and his colleagues be allowed to keep their salaries from the company they defrauded? What about members of criminal organisations, making their living trafficking drugs or stolen goods? Or hired killers?

In response to these questions, I suggest considering the social value and harm of the work itself. Many forms of work produce social value. Being a forklift driver, a farm worker, or a CEO of a charity is not morally wrong. The work itself is generally considered beneficial (or at least not harmful). The problem is with the status of the individual worker or their claims when applying, not with the performance of the job. When the performance of the job itself is not harmful to others, wages should not be confiscated, but when the performance of the job itself is harmful to others, confiscation may be appropriate. The profits or wages paid for selling stolen goods could arguably be confiscated. Wages for otherwise legitimate work performed by those not authorised to work could not.

Potential for change?

As I explore in the article, during the Parliamentary discussions of what is now the Immigration Act of 2016, various MPs had pragmatic objections to the new offence of illegal working, especially its negative impact on vulnerable workers and victims of modern slavery. They had a good reason to be worried. Expert bodies have since warned against the negative impact of criminalising work and confiscating wages on vulnerable migrants, including victims of trafficking.

Few MPs objected to the new offence on the grounds that criminalising work and confiscating wages were also morally wrong. One of them was the then Shadow Home Secretary, Andy Burnham. In December 2015, almost ten years ago, Burnham argued that “The House should reject the Bill. Working to put food in your kids’ mouths should never be a criminal offence”. Ten years later, as the new Prime Minister, he may finally be in a position to correct this injustice. However, this would require a change of direction. Like previous governments, the Labour government under Starmer maintained a hard line on immigration, including through raids and arrests of those working illegally, and through yet another immigration and asylum bill, the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act, which the new Prime Minister supported.

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(Suggested citation: M Niezna,“Cheating honest workers out of employment”: The confiscation of wages as proceeds of crime, UK Labour Law Blog, 7 August 2026 available at https://uklabourlawblog.com/)