A family of fraudsters tricked 42 elderly and vulnerable pensioners into parting with their money (£1.3 million) in a phone scam and splashed the cash on Rolex watches and luxury cars, a Bristol court has heard.
The greedy fraudsters (the Mohammed family led by kingpin Atif Mohammed) cold-called potential victims and posed as bank workers who told them their bank accounts were being targeted by thieves.
To gain the victims’ trust, the fraudsters invited whoever they were speaking to to hang up and redial their bank’s fraud team themselves. But they then stayed on the line and intercepted the return call before persuading their victim to transfer their savings into a new ‘safe’ account.
According to a report in Western Daily Press, the money was then moved between accounts before being withdrawn and splashed on cars, including a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo, a Ferrari and a Mercedes.
One victim, Marian Hodges, lost £84,000 after receiving a call from one “Christopher McDonald” in 2014.
Another Dudley Smith transferred £15,400 of his savings after receiving a call from a man posing as a fraud investigator.
The conmen boasted about taking money from ‘losers’ but were discovered when one of them used the landline at their family shop in Glasgow and police traced the call back to them, the court heard.
When the conmen were arrested at their six-bed family mansion in Crosshill, Glasgow, in November 2014, police found 41 mobiles and 57 SIM cards.
The Mohammed family is originally from Pakistan.
According to the media report, cousins Atif Mohammed, 24, and Asif Ali, 33, admitted conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation at Bristol Crown Court last year. Their cousins, brothers Shabeer Ahmed, 25, and Shakeal Ahmed, 21, admitted the same charge in July last year and January this year respectively.
Atif’s brother, Saif Mohammed, 20, admitted concealing, disguising, transferring or converting criminal property.The phoney callers were fed the contact details by call centre worker Zoe Latif, 25, who was the girlfriend of Atif Mohammed, and used mobile phones to ring their victims. She admitted encouraging or assisting indictable offences, the report added.
Atif and Saif’s mother Shameem Ali Mohammed, 44, is charged with possessing criminal property after more than £100,000 was found in her bedroom.Shameem denies any knowledge of the fraud and is appearing in court this week to stand trial charged with possessing criminal property.
The trial continues.
