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04
Aug 2023
Polish prisoner jailed after absconding to UK to work in Harrogate hospital
A Polish prisoner who absconded from his homeland and used his criminal brother’s identity documents to land a job at Harrogate District Hospital has been jailed for nearly two years.
Przemyslaw Poltorak, 39, used his brother Lucas Poltorak’s Polish identity cards and driving licence to find work as a cleaner at the hospital, earning over £40,000 during his employment there, York Crown Court heard.
Prosecutor Charlotte Noddings said Poltorak, from Harrogate, had a criminal record in Poland but the UK immigration authorities had not yet managed to ascertain the details.
According to Poltorak, his previous convictions were for fraud, theft, drug offences and robbery. He was sentenced to 11 years in jail in 2004 for a “range of offences” and had served seven years when he fled to the UK under a false identity while on day release in 2011.
Ms Noddings said if Poltorak were jailed by a UK court, the normal procedure would be deportation to his homeland “to answer whatever matters he has to answer for”.
Ms Noddings said:
She added, however, that despite his record, if Poltorak had entered the UK under his own identity at the time in question, when the UK was still part of the European Union, he would have been able to get into the country without a hitch.
In fact, Poltorak, trying to disguise his criminal convictions in his own country, chose instead to use his brother’s identity documents to firstly get into the UK and then land a job at Harrogate District Hospital, where he worked without anyone suspecting a thing.
Poltorak admitted fraud in that between June 2013 and June 2023 he used another person’s ID documents to gain employment and thereby make a gain of £150,000 – his earnings at the hospital and a car-manufacturing company in Knaresborough.
He also admitted using identity documents in March 2023 to obtain a driving licence - which meant he was also driving on the UK’s roads illegally - and using those same documents to obtain employment.
Using brother's identity
Poltorak, of Malham Drive, Harrogate, appeared for sentence yesterday (Thursday, August 3) after being remanded in custody.
Ms Noddings said Poltorak, who was using his brother’s name and identity, was arrested at Harrogate District Hospital.
Ms Noddings said:
On that same day in November 2022, immigration officials converged on Przemyslaw Poltorak’s home and arrested him. They seized a “driving document related to Lucas Poltorak”.
Ms Noddings said that a driving record in the name of Lucas Poltorak was created on March 9, 2020. Przemyslaw Poltorak had used his brother’s details on his application for a driving licence.
She added:
Poltorak was paid £42,337 during his employment at the hospital.
However, further enquiries revealed that between 2013 and 2020, he had also been employed by a car-manufacturing firm in Knaresborough which he had secured by using the same false identity cards.
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During his seven-year stint at the car company, he earned £111,631, said Ms Noddings.
Home Office officials reviewed his records and downloaded text messages from his phone which had been seized at the hospital. They showed that Poltorak had been passing himself off as his brother Lucas.
When the real Lucas Poltorak was identified, it transpired that Border Force officials had refused him entry to the UK when he landed at Leeds/Bradford Airport in November 2022.
Further scrutiny by immigration officials revealed that Lucas Poltorak had been granted the right to settle in the UK in June 2021 but was then refused re-entry a year later when his previous convictions were discovered.
'Hard working man'
Kevin Blount, Przemyslaw Poltorak’s solicitor advocate, said his client had left prison in Poland on day release and used his brother’s identity cards to travel to the UK with his wife and children, but that in fact he could have done so legally when the country was part of the EU and borderless travel.
He said that Poltorak had since lived a “law-abiding life” in the UK, “save for the fact that it was in the wrong name”.
Mr Blount added:
He said that a European arrest warrant for Poltorak had still not been issued despite his detention and during the transition period when the UK was in the process of leaving the EU, he still had a right to work in this country “under his own name”.
Mr Blount said that Poltorak was a “hard working man” and even though he had lost his legal status in the UK, his family still had a right to live here.
Judge Simon Hickey said it appeared that Poltorak had fled Poland not just for a “better life for your family”, but also because he would have served a whole jail term for his previous offences in his homeland, whereas in the UK he would have been released at the halfway point.
He said that the “real seriousness of (Poltorak’s offences in the UK) was “working for that vast amount of time and concealing who you were”.
Poltorak received a 20-month jail sentence but will only serve half of that sentence behind bars before being released on prison licence, although his deportation is still in the offing.
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