Victims too embarrassed to report fake ‘faith healers’ City Trading Standards boss reveals difficulty in prosecuting fraudsters
FAKE ‘faith healers’ operating in Birmingham are escaping justice because their victims are too embarrassed to come forward, the city council has warned.
Trading Standards officials have identified suspected fraudsters and even entered their homes.
But they were unable to take any action because they could not persuade victims to make witness statements.
Service head Sajeela Naseer admitted there was little the council could do to restrict their activity.
In 2016 Abdoulie Gassama, then aged 34 and from Erdington, admitted 18 charges of fraud, and a count of money laundering, after conning three women out of £145,000. He was jailed for sevenand-a-half years and later lost an appeal to get his sentence cut. But that has proved to be an exception rather than a watershed case.
Raising the issue at Birmingham City Council’s licensing and public protection committee, Cllr Chaman Lal (Lab, Soho) called for tougher restrictions on people using advertising cards claiming they have “magical powers”.
He said: “They are still around preying on vulnerable people, they claim on these cards they can win you the lottery or solve your prob- lems. It is still happening, people are being conned. Can we get some sort of licensing scheme for these people? Otherwise they will carry on.
“They still put windscreen and your letterbox.”
In response, stickers on your flyers through Ms Naseer said: “We have done quite considerable work on fake faith healers, as we would call them. Unfortunately we are unable to introduce any specific licensing scheme for them or limit their activity except in terms of the way they are trying to promote the services they are providing.
“Obviously there are advertising regulations and we have looked at that. We have successfully had an actual custodial sentence for one of the faith healers a year or so ago, which was quite significant.
“But where we have intervened in other cases our major problem appears to be actually getting the victims to come forward with witness statements.
“We have identified victims, we’ve entered the houses of these faith healers and we can track where their money’s gone, but the problem is when we speak to the victims they don’t want to come forward and be part of the evidence and that is restricting our ability in taking enforcement action.”
She added: “I would urge any member who’s aware of people who have been conned to encourage them to contact me and we can have a chat and hopefully they will feel the benefit of coming forward. But it is often a very embarrassing situation for them and I can appreciate their difficulty but without evidence we cannot go any further.”
They are still around preying on vulnerable people, they claim they can win you the lottery or solve your problems Cllr Chaman Lal