Youngsters from a gang, who carried out a £19 million pound bank fraud scam have been jailed after spending all the money in Harrods and on luxury cars. A pipeline of bank accounts were part of a "series of complicated arrangements" used in the "vishing" scam masterminded by 23 year old Feezan Hameed from Glasgow who now faces 11 years in prison.
Nouman Chaudhary, 21, of Glasgow was sentenced to three and a half years for conspiracy to money launder. The Judge said he "frittered money away on ephemeral junk" at Harrods and was present when £48,000 was spent at the luxury department store. He also even travelled first class to Dubai and Pakistan. Abdul Iqbal, 23, was sentenced to 21 months for conspiracy to money launder. The 16 defendants have been sentenced for a total of over 35 years in jail.
Feezan reportedly made phone calls posing as an official from a bank's fraud department, and had victims reveal their financial information, or use card readers to authorise payments online. Not only him, several other members of the gang who helped take out the massive amount between August 2013 to October 2015, have been sentenced. Judge Testar calls Hameed "persuasive, authoritative to the point of being bullying" and "controlling" with his victims. "Anyone who had heard the calls would have been struck and affected by them. There was a great deal of sophistication in the fraud. The people behind the fraud would have need to have an understanding of bank systems. The people involved seem to be able to take control of telephone lines of business so as to shut them out of the banks."
While the judge said "no one really knows" where all the money was spent, it seems £100,000 were spent in Harrods. Hameed and his partners also used Rolls Royce cars and went to nightclubs on the money. A previous hearing had in fact, heard that Hameed fled to Paris when the rest of the group was arrested, but was extradited back to the country for trial.
