‘Ruthless’ crash-for-cash fraudster avoids jail term

A SERIAL ‘crash-for-cash’ fraudster who plotted to scam insurance firms out of more than £35,000 has avoided an immediate jail sentence.

“Ruthless” Shehzad Saeed, 33, of Redstone Farm Road, Solihull, risked lives by engineering collisions involving innocent drivers.

The car hire boss used fake names and addresses, including those of his own relatives, as he targeted some of Britain’s best-known brands between 2015 and 2017.

At Birmingham Crown Court, Saeed was sentenced for five ‘crash for cash’ plots, in which he sought to swindle Direct Line, Aviva, RSA and Allianz.

He was handed a two-year suspended sentence with conditions including 240 hours of unpaid work and that he repaid £1,500 in costs. The dad-of-five used various names to make insurance claims for accidents in and around Birmingham and registered fraudulent policies to relatives’ addresses.

Det Con James Rafiq, who led the investigation, said: “Saeed was ruthless and selfish in his attempts at financial gain through bogus insurance claims. Had he been successful in his attempts, Saeed would have inflicted a potential loss of over £35,000 to four widely-used insurers.

“Losses through fraudulent activity like this are the cause of increased premiums for law-abiding policy holders.”

Saeed’s crimes were exposed when the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB) received a tip-off from insurer members in 2016 about suspicious crashes in the West Midlands.

Police discovered Saeed first reported a fake road collision on March 5, 2015, when he claimed a Mercedes had crashed into the back of his Ford Focus. This incident allegedly took place the day after a sevenday policy with Aviva was taken out by the Mercedes driver.

It later emerged Saeed used a fake name to pretend to be the Mercedes driver and take out the policy. He was caught when the address provided for the Mercedes driver was found to be empty. Images of the damage to Saeed’s car in an engineer’s report dated from two years before the alleged ‘crash’ took place.

Five days later, another accident was reported. Saeed used the same alias, although he was now driving a Volvo XC60, and again claimed the accident happened days after a seven-day policy was taken out. The police investigation discovered the Volvo had been offered for sale on eBay a day before Saeed took out the policy, and was listed as already damaged in the item description.

Saeed continued to use similar methods across three further claims, adopting false names and addresses, forging engineer reports and channelling compensation into his firm’s account.

Stephen Dalton, head of intelligence and investigations at the IFB, said: “Saeed would lure innocent people into car crashes so he could make quick cash at the expense of their distress.”