Four people have been hit with jail sentences for their part in a phone scam plot designed to trick elderly residents into handing over their life savings.
Jahangir Khan, from Glendower Road in Perry Barr, and Arafa Begum, from Denby Close in Nechells, ran a ‘Courier Fraud’ scheme targeting primarily pensioners across the Midlands and other parts of the UK.
Along with Londoners Mohammed Miah, 21, and 24-year-old Motahir Rahman, they tricked victims into handing over bank cards and PIN numbers by posing as police officers claiming their bank accounts had been hacked.
In less than two months from early January to late February 2014, the heartless group made more than 1,300 ‘phishing’ calls to landline numbers. And they plundered the accounts of 84 people, including 58 in the West Midlands, after persuading them to surrender their bank cards.
Among their victims was an 89-year-old Short Heath woman whom they conned out of more than £3,000.
Two weeks later they took more than £2,500 from an 83-year-old Kingstanding woman, while they also stole £498 from a 92-year-old woman in Weoley Castle.
Detectives from West Midlands Police’s Economic Crime Unit secured CCTV of Khan using a stolen bank card in a shop yards from Begum’s home, as well as footage of the pair spending £313 in Tesco at another pensioner’s expense.
Painstaking phone analysis of the ‘phishing’ calls by fraud investigators identified Khan, Miah and Begum as suspects, while a phone number given by Begum during a motorway police stop on the M5 was linked to a damning text message exchange in which she discussed splitting scam profits with Khan.
More key evidence − including phones and more than £2,600 in cash − was recovered when police searched a vehicle in which Khan and Begum were travelling. And Rahman was caught on CCTV using a bank card stolen from one of the group’s victims.
