A Milton Keynes care firm has been fined £15,000 for employing an illegal worker â the only company in Buckinghamshire to be hit with such a penalty during a three-month period.
DMJE Healthcare Ltd is registered at 7 Genesis Green in the cityâs Ashland neighbourhood and run by Dr Andrew Oluwamayowa Ojo, a 44-year-old from Nigeria.
His firm, which says it provides residential care activities for the elderly and disabled and other residential care, was visited by immigration enforcement officers on February 26, 2024.
Inspectors found that DMJE had employed âone individual who had no right to work in the UKâ and the Homes Office subsequently issued a civil penalty of £15,000 to the firm.
The company has not objected or appealed against the civil penalty and at the time of publication the fine remains unpaid.
DMJEâs website is no longer active after the domain name was suspended and an email address or phone number for the company could not be found.
The Bucks Free Press approached Ojo and his former business partner Olamide Adejoke Ojo for comment via social media.
Olamide Adejoke Ojo, 40, also from Nigeria, founded DMJE in 2018 under a different name and maintained control of the company for several years.
However, she was removed as a director in June of this year just months after Dr Andrew Oluwamayowa Ojo began to run DMJE, according to its Companies House listing.
DMJEâs fine was listed on the Home Officeâs newly-updated page for illegal working civil penalties for London and the South East England region from January 1 to March 31, 2024.
The listing did not include any other Bucks businesses but did detail penalties for firms in neighbouring counties including fines of £10,000 each for Slough companies, the Steakout steak house and Tinywell Healthcare Services.
A spokesperson for the Home Office told the Free Press: âThe way that criminal gangs treat people when they are employed illegally is inhumane and abhorrent.
âVulnerable individuals can find themselves trapped in unsafe and insecure conditions, facing exploitation and even modern-day slavery, often facilitated by organised criminal gangs.â
The Home Office said that illegal working visits increased by 73 per cent in 2023 compared with 2022, with overall arrests from enforcement visits in 2023 more than doubling in comparison with the previous year.
The civil penalty for employing illegal workers was also increased in February, meaning that employers can now be issued with a fine of up to £60,000 per worker.