Rahim Ali
Rahim Ali

Four men, who pretended to be police officers as they conned over £100,000 out of elderly and vulnerable victims in a nationwide fraud, have this month been sentenced to a total of 15 years in prison at Leeds Crown Court.

The quartet, sentenced on Friday 18th November, were all from London, yet were charged in Leeds after a 15-month investigation by the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Organised Crime Unit.

Throughout their spate of frauds, over 60 offences were reported across 13 different areas of England with similar complaints also received from people in West Yorkshire.

The men jailed last week were Malik Amer, 24, for three years, seven months; Shah Ahmed, 22, for four years, seven months; Rahim Ali, 22, for three years, six months; and Ruhel Miah, 19, for four years, 11 months.

Malik Amer
Malik Amer

All men admitted conspiracy to commit fraud.

A further man from London admitted one offence of fraud and will be sentenced at a later date.

The investigation by the Leeds-based team started after a number of fraud cases involving people pretending to be police officers were reported to police in the Yorkshire and Humber region.

The group involved would phone unsuspecting victims with the caller pretending to be a police officer claiming to be investigating fraudulent transactions or activities within the victim’s bank account.

That bogus police officer would then try and convince his victim that he needed their money to be able to investigate the fraud.

Shah Ahmed
Shah Ahmed

From this point the victim was informed that they needed to go to the bank and withdraw a large amount of money (usually between £5,000 and £20,000).

The bogus officer would then send someone around who would also pretend to be a police officer or someone working for the police to the victim’s house to collect the money.

An alternative method the group used to collect their ill-gotten gains was to get the victim to directly transfer the cash (again somewhere between £5,000 to £20,000) to another ‘safe’ bank account.

As officers began to investigate the cases it was quickly established that the offenders were committing similar offences across the country.

Many of the recorded crimes did not succeed – but they still managed to con ten victims out of a total of £118,000. The largest single amount defrauded was £37,000.

Ruhel Miah
Ruhel Miah

Speaking after the men were sentenced, Detective Constable John Davies, of the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Organised Crime Unit, said: “These four individuals are callous – they preyed upon often vulnerable and/or elderly people and in many cases tricked them out of their life savings.

“To compound their behaviour they pretended to be police officers – the very people in society who look to protect people from such wrong doing. 

“We know, having spoken to the victims and their families that the experience was a terrible ordeal for them and many are still to fully recover from the trauma. Thankfully many of their attempted scams failed and people saw through their mask of respectability.”