Little did she know UKHSA was not Chowdhury's only employer.

That month, he was also being paid to work full-time for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Department for Business and Trade, the Food Standards Agency and the Home Office. He was contracted to work 183 hours a week – more than the number of hours in seven days. He fraudulently earned more than £284,000 of taxpayers' money.

In total, he had eight overlapping full-time public-sector jobs between 2020 and 2023. During that time, this relatively junior civil servant was paid £350,000.

Soon after her call with Chowdhury, Adams discovered that he had logged into the call using a Defra email address. When she challenged him about it, he blamed it on a technical error. She told the jury at his trial at Southwark Crown Court: "I believed he was lying." She escalated her concerns up the chain.

But his fraudulent behaviour remained undetected.…