Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
CAMDEN of thieves
London borough has become the hotbed of courier crime
CAMDEN in North London is the epicentre of a nationwide fraud that exploits the fact most of us will help to fight crime.
It works when crooks pose as police officers or bank employees investigating fraud and persuade their victims to hand over bank cards or cash to a “police” courier.
One of the latest Camden gangs to be caught operated as “a well-oiled team”, moving to a hotel in Hull from where they made around 1,000 calls over four days.
The intended victims were told to hang up and call their bank to be certain of who they were talking to.
But the crooks didn’t hang up and victims ended up on the line to another gang member.
“In this way the victim thinks they have made a careful check, but in fact they have played into scammers’ hands,” prosecutor Nicholas De La
Poer told Hull crown court.
“The reason the fraud works is because those targeted are from a public-spirited generation.”
The victims, aged from 70 to 94, lost £40,000 and some have since died.
Eight members of the gang admitted their part in the fraud and a ninth, 25-year-old Abu Kaher, has been found guilty of fraud after a two-week trial.
There’s no mystery about how they came together. Kaher went to the same Camden secondary school as some of the other gang members, played football with others, and the rest were friends of friends.
Mohammed Miah, Ali Nuruddin, Junid Patwary, Mizan Ali, Amanul Islam, Ruhin Khan, and Abdul Ali, all of London, plus Tanvir Ahmed, of Birmingham, will be sentenced at a later date. This is just the latest example of a Camden courier gang.
In May this year Mohammed Noor, 21, also from Camden, was jailed for four years and eight months for the same scam, while six accomplices got between eight months and four years.
They put a particularly nasty twist on the crime, saying that their victims’ bank cards had been used fraudulently by a grandchild, who was now being held in custody.
The frightened victims were persuaded to hand over cash to “police” couriers supposedly working as part of the investigation.
In February 2015, another Camden gang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.
They made around 1,200 cold calls to members of the public claiming that their bank cards had been “compromised”, luring victims into revealing their PINS before sending couriers to supposedly take their cards to the police.
Mohammed Miah, 22, and Muhammed Ahmed, 23, got three years and seven months, Motahir Rahman, 24, and Dedar Ali, 21, were each jailed for three years and four months, and Mohammed Hussain, 23, got three years.
They stole more than £40,000 from 11 vulnerable victims, several aged in their eighties.
Judge Stephen Warner, sitting at St Albans crown court, said: “These were mean and cynical offences deliberately planned to take advantage of the vulnerable.”
In 2014, Mohammed Abbas Ali from Camden was jailed for 21 months for the fraud.
He’d posed as a bank employee to convince two victims that their cards had been used fraudulently and should be handed over to a courier.
One lost £7,000, the other was swindled out of £4,000.
A three-strong Camden gang moved to Birmingham to run the scam from a bed and breakfast, phoning victims and posing as police officers.
Hussain Abdirahman, who had previous convictions for robbery, was jailed for three years and one month in 2014, while Imran Miah and Masum Uddin got 20 months each.
In 2013, two brothers were jailed after fleecing victims of £250,000, and gambled much of the loot during nights out in casinos.
Unemployed Shilu Miah, who had previously done time for manslaughter, got six years, and Dulu Miah got four.
They operated their crime from their parents’ council flat that was in Camden, of course.