Jailed, brains behind £15m bank swindle
Businessman led gang who ran mobile phone scam
A SCOT who masterminded a £15million bank con while staff were on holiday has been jailed for seven and a half years after ten years on the run.
Sohail Qureshi was the brains behind Glasgow-based fraudsters who raided NatWest’s accounts by exploiting a flaw in the online banking system.
They cashed worthless cheques disguised as payments for mobile phones then transferred the money to an account in Latvia.
Staff only noticed more than £15million had been taken when they returned to work after a Bank Holiday.
When t he plot was f oiled Qureshi, 53, fled to Dubai, leaving his associates in the UK to be jailed for a total of 54 years in 2008. He believed he was safe because there was no extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirates at the time he fled.
But after a decade, Qureshi, of Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire, was repatriated to the UK.
He denied involvement in the fraud but was convicted of conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to money launder and conspiracy to use false instruments for fraud.
Sentencing Qureshi, j udge Nicholas Loraine-Smith said: ‘ You were a professional and consummate fraudsman.’
Southwark Crown Court heard that Qureshi and his associates transferred millions of pounds to Latvia.
‘Fraudsters aimed to obtain millions of pounds from a NatWest branch in St Helens, Lancashire, and remove those millions from the UK as quickly as possible’, said prosecutor David Aaronberg, QC.
‘Over the May Bank Holiday, when a cheque was paid into an account, its value showed on internal screens of staff as available for onward payment – even before it had cleared.’
Realising this flaw provided an easy way to deceive the bank, worthless
‘Consummate fraudsman’
cheques were paid in by a man called Ian Clark to a company run by convicted fraudsters Darren Lee and Martin Williams.
‘It wasn’t until seven days later that the bank realised there was no value in this account,’ said Mr Aaronberg.
‘Between April 30 and May 4 2004, £15.25million left the bank, into the hands of f raudsters. By May 6, £13.5million of that money was in a bank account in Riga, Latvia.
‘The intention was that most of it would be sent to Dubai.
‘In that one week, the money had been passed from one company to another, in an attempt to disguise its origin and make it appear as though it was the proceeds of trading vast quantities of mobile phones. The phones never existed.’
The con was foiled when Latvian authorities grew suspicious.
Qureshi, along with Ian Clark, of Paisley, Renfrewshire, and Syed Alam, ‘were all involved in the running of Glasgow-based company Marryvale,’ Mr Aaronberg said, adding that the firm operated from serviced offices in Glasgow’s Park district.
Marryvale claimed to deal electronic goods and traded with another alleged front company, Britanniacity UK Ltd – ‘a Liverpool-based company run by the fraudsters Darren Lee and Martin Williams’.
Lee Quincey, from Manchester, admitted conspiracy to steal from NatWest and was jailed for five years and 11 months in 2008. Darren Lee, from Liverpool, Martin Williams, from Bootle, Merseyside, were each jailed for five years and nine months for conspiracy to steal.
Ian Clark – described in court as an ‘errand boy’ – was handed a threeyear sentence after he was convicted by a jury of the same offence in 2008.
Mohammed Ali Khan, also accused of involvement, remains on the run and is thought to be in Dubai.