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A conman pretended to be a successful butcher to commit a £3.3million tax fraud.

Father of six Gary Turner convinced others he ran a meat wholesalers famous for its sausage rolls and pies – but the firm had been bust for 14 years.

His Walter Mitty-type fantasy was in fact a ruse to rip off the taxpayer by continuing to claim vast sums of VAT from HMRC on the basis he was still in charge of a going concern.

And the cash he gained funded a luxury lifestyle.

When Turner’s detached house was raided, revenue officers found five luxury cars with personalised number plates and a watch collection worth more than £35,000, including two Rolexes valued at £17,420.

A £4,600 juke box and three guitars costing £2,000 were also discovered.

It also emerged he spent £7,000 on family holidays to Spain and used more taxpayer money to build a new house with a top of the range kitchen and bathroom as well as two other properties.

Turner, 47 a Jehovah’s Witness, was declaring huge profits from his non-existent business and claiming back tens of thousands of pounds every year.

To conceal the scam, the fraudster had his “business” mail delivered to a premises he had bought, left false paperwork lying around his home in Morley, Leeds, and spent 20 hours a week in his office at home printing fake invoices and accounts.

He even spent longer in there to convince his family he was working but was simply buying goods from TV shopping channels.

Turner genuinely traded under Turners Butchers in 1988, opening franchises in Kwik Save branches and becoming renowned for his sausage rolls and pies.

But when his shops started to go bust in 1996, partly because of the mad cow disease scare, his elaborate deceit began and continued until his arrest in April 2011.

Turner told the revenue he was a wholesaler who got meat from the Botswana meat commission but his fiddle began to unravel when the commission told HMRC they had never supplied him.

He then gave investigators details for an non-existent accountant and provided fake business records.

At Leeds crown court, Turner admitted the fraud and will be sentenced tomorrow.

Peter Hollier, HMRC Assistant Director for Criminal Investigation, said: “We want to make it clear to people who think it’s acceptable to defraud the tax system that tax fraud is a serious criminal offence.

"Turner tried to play the system so his family could live a luxury lifestyle. He went to a lot of effort to hide his crime but despite his best attempts our investigators were able to unravel what he thought was a water-tight scam.”

Around £785,000 of Turner’s assets have already been frozen by HMRC.