Fraudster who conned widow, 80, out of life savings gets 5 years
Crook lied to victim of previous scam to steal even more
ACALLOUS fraudster conned a Birmingham widow out of her life savings after telling her sob stories and claiming he could help her recover money she had lost in a previous scam.
Shahbaz Qureshi told the 80-yearold victim he was working with a firm of solicitors to help get her investment back, but was in fact spending £50,000 a day on gambling websites.
Over 18 months he asked her for court costs totalling £236,955. He also persuaded her to give him more money by telling her lies, claiming he had a brain tumour.
Qureshi, 30, of Olorenshaw Road, Sheldon, who had previously admitted fraud, was jailed for five years and four months. Birmingham Crown Court heard the victim had previously invested £140,000 in a scheme called Binary Book which turned out to be fraudulent.
After losing the money she and others attended a conference in Birmingham which was supposed to have been set up to assist those who had been victims of the fraud.
Earl Pinnock, prosecuting, said: “Qureshi was in attendance, no doubt looking for vulnerable people to prey on. The prosecution says that he is a fraudster, liar and inveterate gambler.
“He conned her out of money to fuel his greedy gambling habit and his lifestyle. He drove a large BMW.
“The defendant seemed to her friendly and sympathetic.”
Mr Pinnock said the defendant also used his father, who he said was involved in buying commodities in China, to give him credibility. He said Qureshi told the pensioner that his grandmother had had a serious accident in Pakistan and that he needed money to go to the country and also pay for an ambulance to transfer her to a better hospital.
He asked for £3,000 and because of her good nature, she lent him the sum but was never paid back.
Qureshi also told the victim he could get the money back she had lost through a firm of Birmingham solicitors and also by investing in a Bitcoin scheme. Mr Pinnock said the defendant gave her the genuine name of a firm and a solicitor but the firm never received a penny and he had told her not to contact them.
The woman gave him all of her savings, used up all of her credit on her credit cards and sold or pawned her jewellery.
However, Qureshi then told her that another £40,000 ‘would do it’ and as a result the widow persuaded a friend, who had also lost money in the Binary Book scam, to lend her the sum which she gave to the defendant.
Mr Pinnock said the defendant had used another sob story claiming to her he had a brain tumour and had also threatened he would send bailiffs round.
“Fortunately her daughter found out about it and realised it was a scam,” Mr Pinnock said. “Sadly by then, she was virtually penniless.”
Mr Pinnock said during the time of the fraud, between February 2018 and June 2019, Qureshi had gambled £446,000 and had lost £194,000.
Balbir Singh, defending, said
Qureshi had not gone to the meeting to target someone. He went on: “He was in the grip of addiction and could not help himself.”
In a statement, the woman said that the money she had lost had been intended to help her disabled son. “I have been completely shattered and have been taken advantage of. I feel embarrassed that I put trust in someone to help me. I have had to remortgage my home. It has ruined my life.”
In passing sentence, Judge Martin Hurst said that the victim had previously invested small sums with the defendant with no returns from them and that Qureshi had concluded she was a “soft touch”.
He said: “You realised if you told her lies she would give you money. You bled her dry. It was her entire life savings.”