Fraudsters have stolen millions of pounds from the government using the identities of Network Rail employees. The workers' details were used to make false tax credit claims. Network Rail yesterday told employees that a Revenue & Customs investigation had revealed that a significant number of them had been affected by the fraud.

The Revenue said: "This fraud involved a number of suspects opening up bank accounts in the names of Network Rail employees and using these false IDs to commit identity fraud. When they tried to use them to defraud the tax credit system, it was HMRC that detected the fraud, informed Network Rail, closed it down and stopped the payments."