by The elderly victims of a “vile” banking scam who saw off fraudsters and managed to manage their life savings say they were “absolutely helpless.” The nine pensioners were among those targeted and then “controlled” by organized criminals who tricked them out of an eye-watering £1.5 million.
Serial conman Azeem Mohammed, 33, who organized events from a swanky flat in Salford, is now jailed for his “leading role” in the conspiracy.
At his sentencing hearing at Manchester Crown Court, details of the extraordinary lengths to which he and his accomplices went to convince the victims that they were, as they claimed, fraud investigators from a high street bank, and the elaborate ways in which they were oppressed and exploited. , was laid out.
READ MORE: From a flat in Salford, he ruined lives
The court heard about the huge financial and psychological impact the offending has had on its fearful and distrustful victims – including a former bank manager – whose lives and future plans have been turned upside down.
One couple, who are in their 80s, lost more than half a million pounds as part of the conviction led by Mohammed. The wife received a call on her landline from a man saying that someone had tried to order an Amazon parcel to be delivered to Manchester for £600 and tried to pay from her Barclays bank account.
The next day, she received a call from a man who was a fraud investigator from the bank, who introduced her to a ‘colleague’ named Steven Cunningham, an identity that has now been linked to Mohammed.
After gaining her trust, he persuaded her to install an app called Team Viewer on her computer, which gave the scammers control over it, and access to her bank accounts and email address.
They told her she had to buy a new iPhone and send it to them at an address in Glasgow, which she did. Packages then began arriving at their home, including one containing gold bars, which they said were ‘Russian’ and which they were also instructed to forward.
They opened three new bank accounts in her name that she did not have access to, and transferred the couple’s savings into them. The victims had no idea what had happened until the police turned up at their home in June last year. Loans have also since been taken out in their name, and the police and courts have had to intervene to cancel them. In total, they were defrauded of £563,000.
In a heartbreaking victim impact statement read to the court, the woman said: “Shock was an understatement when I found out our life savings had been wiped out.
“I can’t think of printable words to describe what happened to us. We were saving for our grandson. We lost our daughter three years ago to cancer and this was supposed to help with his education. Our spending is reduced. We don’t have the financial freedom we should have.”
‘It has shaken me to the core’
The second victim, a widower in his late 70s, whose wife died in 2022, lost £40,000 after being contacted by him posing as investigators from his Lloyds bank.
They reinstalled Team Viewer and took control of their computer for the day. They also urged him to set up a new account and make two ‘test’ transfers into it. Eventually he became suspicious and alerted the authorities.
“It really bothers me. I was very surprised when I suddenly clicked late that evening that I was done…I was scammed,” he said.
“I live alone and I’m still dealing with the loss of my wife. And you don’t have someone else around that you can say to ‘I had this strange phone call, what do you think?’
“This has affected my basic confidence in dealing with people and dealing with third parties. It really broke my heart how easily I was being lured and led on by these criminals.
“I’m over the anger but I’m not over the shock, I’m not over the fear and I think it’s going to take me a long time to get over this.”
One of the victims, an 84-year-old man who lost £65,000 with his wife, was a bank manager for 38 years and went through numerous checks with fraudsters, who used different phone numbers, a fake website and address . connected with his bank to convince him.
He spoke of the relentless pressure they put on him while on the phone and giving him instructions. “I’m not a technician, and I felt like I was being pushed very hard,” he said. “I wasn’t being given any breaks, I couldn’t take food and gradually I was getting very worn out, very tired.”
“I felt a little ashamed that I was caught by the fraud,” he said. “Especially because of my experience in the bank, thirty-eight and a half years, and I felt that I should have been able to push it out a little better. I felt that I had been let down…the bank, was I have let down my family and I would really let myself down too.
“Now I don’t trust anything, anyone or any financial transaction without double-checking it. This is not my character in the past, but now I think this is so relevant and important that do and don’t. trust again.”
‘We felt completely different’
Another couple lost £143,000 after the fraudsters tricked them into opening new accounts, including one where their money was converted to Euros. “As for me, the sight of my wife will not leave her savings to the fraudster believing that she was protecting her money,” said the husband. “I feel like I’ve let her down because I didn’t see through the deception first.
“This crime cruelly took away our self-generated financial cover and until the bank started to recover some funds, we felt that we were doomed, and this very negative situation continues to this day.”
The court heard that another couple appeared to be being watched by the group, who are said to have used tracking and listening devices. As they passed their branch of Lloyds in Gillingham, Kent, the man linked to Mohammed opened a line on the new iPhone they were tricked into buying and shouted down the new iPhone “Don’t go into the bank!” The wife said she was “furious” and that the crime had affected her children “a lot”.
Mohammed was arrested after ‘making a mistake’. In April 2021, he called HSBC with a suspected victim’s account and sort code but gave his own name, apparently under the influence of drink or drugs.
Following an investigation by the Debit & Payment Card Crime Unit, a national police unit that works with the banking industry, he was arrested near his Wilburn Basin flat on Ordsall Lane, Ordsall. A phone containing SIM cards of three numbers linked to the scam was found.
He pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to one count of conspiracy to defraud. He admitted on the basis of a plea that he defrauded nine victims over a period of three years – April 2021 to April 2024 – of up to £958,949. The court was told that the ‘wider conspiracy’ involved more than £1.5m. The banks paid back some of the victims’ money, but not all of it.
Mohammed had a previous conviction for an almost identical offence. He was part of an ‘international organized crime gang targeting elderly Scots’ in a ‘series of elaborate scams’ for which he was jailed in 2013.
On Thursday (October 31), Judge Suzanne Goddard KC sentenced him to six years and nine months. She added: “This is the most sophisticated and complex banking fraud against individuals I have seen in my 38 years in criminal law.”
She said the impact on the victims was ‘horrendous’, saying: “It’s telling that they have found the stoicism to get on with their lives and make the best of things, despite the huge financial loss that they suffered. a testament to the stoicism of people of their generation.”
