A Barnsbury man has been jailed after lying about being ill and claiming almost £20,000 in fraudulent travel insurance payouts.

Richard Agyemang, 36, of Fife Terrace, was sentenced to 16 months in prison at Inner London Crown Court on Friday.

He was caught by the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED) after several insurers became suspicious of his claims.

In each of the bogus claims, Agyemang contacted insurer a few days before a family holiday saying he was unable to travel due to injury or food poisoning and had to cancel it.

He then claimed for the cost of flights and hotel accommodation using various documents, such as bank statements, airline tickets and emails of booked hotel reservations, which IFED later proved to be fraudulent.

Agyemang made a total of four claims against three different insurers over two years between March 2012 and March 2014. Each claim was worth £4,500, amounting to £19,225 overall.

Det Insp Lara Xenoudakis, of IFED, said: “Agyemang was systematic in the way he committed insurance fraud. He made almost identical claims, using the same fraudulent documents, but targeted a different insurer each time to try and avoid detection.”