Jailed mastermind’s fraud factory stole £2m every week
A Scot became one of Britain’s biggest ever crooks after steering a huge, sophisticated bank fraud operation that netted £113 million.
Feezan Hameed, 27, was jailed for 11 years in September 2016 for heading a “vishing” scam that conned 750 Royal Bank of Scotland group customers.
Hameed, from Glasgow, struggled to spend the money he was stealing and blew a fortune on a fleet of luxury cars, expensive jewellery and lavish trips to Dubai.
He flew his favourite valet team from Glasgow to India to clean his cars while, on another occasion, the Versace-clad crook posed with a tiger in a spectacular photoshoot.
Nicknamed Fizzy, at the height of his operations, Hameed’s team were stealing £2m.
He led a gang of scammers who phoned victims pretending to be from the anti-fraud department of Lloyds or RBS before duping them into divulging their account details.
They then raided the accounts of their victims, stealing vast sums before transferring the money through a number of “mule” accounts provided by crooked bank employees before withdrawing the cash from ATMs.
Hameed’s younger brother, and the gang’s accountant, Nouman Choudhary, 22, was also jailed for three-and-a-half years for conspiracy to launder the cash through property deals in Scotland and Pakistan.
Michael Shorrock QC, prosecuting, said the gang’s fraud was “a nationwide conspiracy to defraud companies and businesses by hacking into their bank accounts and stealing large sums of money” between January 2013 and October 2015.
However, even incarceration wasn’t enough to stop Hameed’s criminal activities and he was sentenced to another two years in jail last year after he plotted to steal £500,000 in an identical con organised from his prison cell.
Prison staff found a “dirty phone”, SIM card and paper noting four account numbers.
Hameed admitted conspiracy to defraud at Southwark Crown Court.