Bent cop in ‘Line of Duty’ criminal gang scam
A CORRUPT police officer helped an organised crime gang steal from their rivals in a Line of Duty- style multimillion-pound plot, a court heard.
Kashif Mahmood, 31, used his police car to stop vehicles he knew were carrying drug cash after being tipped off by the group.
accompanied on two occasions by Romanian bodybuilder Ioan Gherghel, 34, who posed as his police partner, they would confiscate the money.
Mahmood, a Metropolitan Police constable, regularly jetted to Dubai and bought designer watches. the force’s anti-corruption unit began investigating him last year after French authorities infiltrated an encrypted phone network used by the gang, southwark Crown Court heard. the messages showed on one occasion Mahmood seized £850,000 using the ploy. He also misused police computers to gather intelligence on behalf of his criminal associates.
Peter Ratliff, prosecuting, said: ‘Kashif Mahmood was at the heart of the most audacious aspect of the organised crime group’s criminal conduct.’ the court heard he ‘would take marked and unmarked police vehicles, and, dressed in his police uniform, travel to locations where the organised crime group were engaged in or aware of the transfer of significant quantities of criminal cash – which was either to be laundered or reflected payment for wholesale quantities of drugs’.
Mahmood, of Harlow, Essex, seized cash from the unsuspecting criminals ‘under the pretext of lawful exercise of his powers as a police officer’, said Mr Ratliff. He admits acquiring criminal property and misconduct in a public office. While he was not paid a share of the cash seized, he was ‘rewarded for his conduct’, the court heard.
the keen bodybuilder was dismissed from the Met last year. Ilford-based gangster twins shabaz Khan, 32, and shazad Khan, 32, and their brother Moshin Khan, 35, admit supplying class a drugs and conspiracy to acquire criminal property.
Mr Ratliff said the brothers ran a ‘highly lucrative organised crime group’ while Moshin’s partner, Maria shah, 34, gave ‘material support’. shah admits conspiracy to supply a class a drug. she and Gherghel admit conspiracy to acquire criminal property. the six will be sentenced today.