A civil servant was imprisoned on Friday for accessing 2,500 Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) records and diverting other people's tax credit claims to his own bank accounts.

John Brian Agdomar, 42, used his job at the DWP as a cover to illegally access records to obtain personal information on a read-only basis from the New Tax Credits computer system.

The information allowed Agdomar and his accomplice Olanekan Omatayo Ogunmekan to hijack existing claims for tax credits, diverting the payments into a network of bank accounts.

Both men were jailed for four-and-a-half years.

"This was a deplorable abuse of a position of trust and today's verdict shows that those who believe they can cheat the system should think again," said an HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) spokesman.

"This was no victimless crime, but a calculated fraud involving a significant amount of money. HMRC will not hesitate to seek prosecution where we find instances of tax credit fraud."

Agdomar was also charged with abusing his position of trust within the civil service where he had accessed benefit systems to obtain information such as dates of birth and national insurance numbers in order to get information on genuine customer records.

According to information obtained by Computing in April, six DWP employees were disciplined for “inappropriate use” of the DWP's Customer Information System (CIS) in the six months to January 2009.

In the same period, local authorities were obliged to carry out internal investigations eight times after being notified by DWP that CIS had been accessed inappropriately.

The DWP became so concerned about instances of unjustified access that in January it sent out a memo to authorities warning them that the practice must stop.

The CIS has 140,000 users in the civil service who can access its information.