A Birmingham-based director and his company has been ordered to pay a Proceeds of Crime confiscation order, fines and costs totalling £476,995.
This follows an Environment Agency investigation into fraudulent entry of waste packaging data.
At Birmingham Crown Court on Friday 16 May 2025, Shaobo Qin, a director of EDU Case Ltd, pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation. He was given a 2 year prison sentence suspended for 18 months.
Qin, age 42, of Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, was also ordered to pay a Proceeds of Crime confiscation order of £255,057. He must pay within 2 months or face 3 years in prison.
He was also disqualified as a director for 4 years and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.
His company, EDU Case Ltd of Portway Road, Rowley Regis, was fined £200,000. The Environment Agency were also awarded £21,995 in investigation costs.
The court was told Qin's company was a plastics and recycling exports enterprise. The offences were discovered by the Environment Agency towards the end of 2022.
The company, orchestrated by Qin, was deliberately and systematically entering false data on to the Environment Agency's National Packaging Waste Database (NPWD) for non-existent waste exports.
This resulted in Qin receiving a benefit for himself and his company in the sum of approx. £255,000. He was arrested on Wednesday 10 January 2024 where he was interviewed by Environment Agency officers.
EDU Case were accredited to carry out plastic packaging exports and able to issue "evidence" of that activity in the form of tonnage figures on the database.
This evidence could be bought by businesses who are obliged to account for their plastic packaging waste under the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2007.
An audit conducted by Environment Agency officers in 2023 and information following that work identified discrepancies between the amount of waste exported and the amount of evidence issued.
The false entries represented nearly two-thirds of the business' entire trade in 2022 towards the end of that year.
As part of that audit, a legal notice was served on Qin and the company in September 2023.
This notice required the production of their evidence of plastic waste exports. In response, Qin sent a computer memory stick containing his business' waste export evidence and a letter explaining a large discrepancy, described as an "overclaim."
The letter stated that the company had carried out 1,239 metric tonnes of plastic waste exports in 2022, only 453.60 metric was genuine and that the majority of his trading, 785.40 metric tonnes was 'a mistake.'
In sentencing the judge said this was without doubt deliberate offending and pre-planned. There had been a significant undermining of the regulatory regime.
He accepted that there had been a guilty plea entered at first opportunity and that money had been put aside to repay the financial benefit made. The company was also fined to mark the seriousness of the offending.
Sham Singh, Senior Environmental Crime Officer for the Environment Agency, said:
"This case shows that the Environment Agency will pursue individuals and their enterprises who profit illegally.
"This was a fraud on a large scale and undermines legitimate business and the investment and economic growth that go with it.
"We support legitimate businesses and are proactively supporting them by disrupting and stopping the criminal element backed up by the threat of tough enforcement as in this case.
"If anyone suspects that a company is doing something wrong, please contact the Environment Agency on 0800 80 70 60 or report it anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111."
The Charges
Shaobo Qin
Between 1st January 2022 and 31st January 2023 dishonestly and intending thereby to make a gain for himself or another, or to cause loss to another, or to expose another to the risk of loss, made a false representation to the online National Packaging Waste Database which was and which he knew was, or might be, untrue or misleading, namely, that the 785.4 tonnes of plastic waste that he claimed EDU Case UK Ltd had exported over that period, had all actually been exported when it had not, contrary to Sections 1 and 2 of the Fraud Act 2006.
EDU Case UK Limited (Company No. 08888722)
Between 1st January 2022 and 31st January 2023 dishonestly and intending thereby to make a gain for himself or another, or to cause loss to another, or to expose another to the risk of loss, made a false representation to the online National Packaging Waste Database which was and which he knew was, or might be, untrue or misleading, namely, that the 785.4 tonnes of plastic waste that EDU Case UK Ltd had exported over that period, had all actually been exported when it had not, contrary to Sections 1 and 2 of the Fraud Act 2006.
Background Information
The Packaging Producer Responsibility Regulations were introduced to oblige the producers of waste packaging such as plastic, glass and cardboard (e.g. supermarkets) to contribute towards the financial cost of recycling and the disposal of waste. Any large organisation that meets the criteria for this obligation is required to prove they have made such financial contributions by the purchasing of credits known as Packaging Recovery Notes (PRNs) or Packaging Export Recovery Notes (PERNs) from UK waste reprocessors and waste exporters.
