A Tyneside pizza business owner has been jailed for two years after fraudulently securing £150,000 in taxpayer-backed Covid loans, including money later spent on gambling.
Matthew Temple, 44, obtained three £50,000 Bounce Back Loans for Pizza Cottage (Whitley Bay) Limited, despite the emergency government scheme allowing only one loan per business. He was sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court on Friday 23 October 2026.
Temple, who was known as Mehdi Ghaneh-Keisami when the offences took place, pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud by false representation at North Tyneside Magistrates’ Court in September.
Three £50,000 loans for one business
According to the Insolvency Service, Temple was the sole director of Pizza Cottage (Whitley Bay) Limited, which traded from East Parade in Whitley Bay.
He secured the first £50,000 loan in May 2020, shortly after the Bounce Back Loan Scheme launched. Three days later, he applied for another £50,000 and falsely declared that it was the company’s only application. The following month, he obtained a third loan after making the same false declaration.
In the applications, he also declared that the funds would be used for the benefit of his business.
Gambling and other spending uncovered
Investigators established that £131,419 of the £150,000 was not spent wholly for business purposes. Within that figure, they identified £11,090 across 46 gambling transactions from one of the company’s bank accounts in less than two weeks in July 2020.
They also traced £264 spent on children’s toys and play equipment on 7 May 2020, a day after the first loan reached the business account.
The findings do not mean that all £131,419 was gambled. The Insolvency Service identified the specific gambling transactions but did not provide a complete breakdown of the remaining spending.
When questioned about his second application, Temple acknowledged his conduct but also pointed to the lender checks, telling investigators: “I know it was my fault, I shouldn’t… I should tell them it was my second, but they didn’t check it either.”
Why were multiple loans possible?
The Bounce Back Loan Scheme rules allowed a maximum of £50,000 per business and required borrowers to use the money for an economic benefit to the business, not personal purposes.
Emergency support was designed to reach struggling firms quickly during the pandemic. But the National Audit Office reported in December 2021 that payment speed had been prioritised and that measures to identify duplicate loan applications were introduced only in June 2020, after 61% of loans by value had already been made.
Those findings help explain the scheme’s wider vulnerability to fraudulent claims. They do not, by themselves, establish which checks were or were not performed on Temple’s individual applications.
Two-year sentence and effort to recover the money
Temple was sentenced to two years in prison on 23 October. The Insolvency Service says it is seeking to recover the fraudulently obtained money under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
David Snasdell, the agency’s chief investigator, said the business owner had exploited a taxpayer-backed scheme intended to help companies survive the pandemic. He said the agency’s work would continue beyond the conviction as it sought to return money to the public purse.
Temple had already been disqualified from acting as a company director for 12 years in 2024 following an earlier civil investigation into his conduct.
Sources: Insolvency Service statement, 26 October 2026; National Audit Office review of the Bounce Back Loan Scheme; British Business Bank scheme FAQs.
