Man Jailed After Stealing £92,000 From Breast Cancer Charity to Fund Wedding and £14,000 Ring

A finance worker at Britain's largest breast cancer charity has been jailed for diverting a £91,966.72 ($124,155) payment owed to his employer into his own bank account. The money went on his wedding, a honeymoon, and a £14,000 ($18,900) designer ring.

Tameem Choudhury, 29, of Stoke Newington in Hackney, was sentenced to two years and six months at the Royal Courts of Justice on 1 September 2026, after admitting fraud and money laundering. He had worked in the charity's finance team, and City of London Police led the investigation.

The money he took was not a donation but a refund. Breast Cancer Now pays for research at hospitals including The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, and in 2023 the trust owed the charity that sum. Overseeing how such payments were processed fell within Choudhury's role.

How the Refund Was Diverted

On 11 August 2023, he emailed the trust a fresh set of bank details, set out on Breast Cancer Now letterhead. The account he named was his own. Taking the details for the charity's, the trust paid the refund into his personal Santander account days later.

The spending began almost at once. Within weeks the money had gone on wedding and honeymoon costs, cash withdrawals, personal debts, and luxury purchases that included an Alexander Brown ring. Investigators also traced some of it to flights to Qatar and to transfers into relatives' accounts.

The Bank, Not the Charity, Raised the Alarm

It was not an internal audit that undid him, but his own bank. Santander flagged suspicious activity on the account, froze it, and later closed it. By the time it was frozen, £42,866.25 ($57,870) was left, and that money was recovered.

Messages later recovered from his phone added to the case. Police said he had described himself as 'borderline broke' shortly before the fraud.

Breast Cancer Now reported him to City of London Police, and he was arrested in June 2025. He pleaded guilty, and more than a year passed between his arrest and sentencing.

Detective Constable Yusuf Meerza, of the force's fraud operations team, said Choudhury had 'abused a position of trust.' Donor generosity funds vital research and support for people with breast cancer, he said, and Choudhury had put those funds at risk for his own benefit.

What the Charity Said

The charity said it had taken the case extremely seriously, co-operated with police throughout, and reviewed its internal processes to guard against a repeat. A spokesperson said: 'Funds have been recovered and the charity has not experienced any financial loss.'

The sum recovered by police was less than half of what had been taken. The charity's own losses were covered, though neither it nor the force has said publicly how the balance was accounted for.

Breast Cancer Now was formed in 2015 and merged with Breast Cancer Care in 2019. King Charles III is its royal patron, and alongside research, it runs support services that include access to specialist nurses and support groups.

The Royal Marsden, whose payment Choudhury intercepted, is one of the country's foremost specialist cancer centres, and its finances have been hit by fraud before.

In 2014, an accounts administrator at the trust, Stacey Tipler, was jailed for four years at Southwark Crown Court after diverting more than £640,000 ($864,000) from supplier payments. Some of that went towards her own wedding.

The court heard the fraud briefly threatened the hospital's drug supply, and £310,857 ($419,657) was never traced.

City of London Police is the national policing lead for fraud and runs the Action Fraud reporting service. In Choudhury's case, no proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act to recover the outstanding money have been reported.