Two years for debt collector who hid behind racism slur
A CROOKED debt collector who accused me of racism has been jailed after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud and committing fraud by false representation.
Samaira Sadique, 34, from Rochdale, was sentenced to two years in prison at Chester Crown Court. Her brother, Mohammed Ali, 36, was jailed for 15 months after admitting the same offences. Both were also banned from acting as company directors for five years.
The pair were behind ADC Organisation Limited, a notorious firm that charged upfront fees. It advertised an ‘excellent success rate’ and if it failed to collect debts, customers were promised ‘your money back, guaranteed!’ This was all lies. It did little or no work in return for the fees and there were complaints that if it did manage to collect any debts, the money was not passed on to the customer.
I first warned against Sadique and her company as long ago as 2005, followed by three further reports since then. She complained to the press watchdog that The Mail on Sunday ‘discriminated against me due to my race’.
She falsely claimed that I had been ‘very abusive’ to her and that she would have been treated differently ‘had this been a white person’. The watchdog investigated and threw out her complaint.
Sadique and Ali raked in £880,000, according to Government investigators. But they were not jailed for running ADC Organisation or for cheating its customers.
They were prosecuted over a separate company, which they called Barclays Recovery Services Limited. It was also a corrupt debt collection firm, but it attracted the authorities’ attention because it used the name of a bank with which it had no link.
Barclays Bank took legal action to prevent its name being misused and this was followed by an investigation by the National Trading Standards Scambuster Team. It found hundreds of victims had been left out of pocket with some losing tens of thousands of pounds.