By Martha Vaughan
THE mastermind behind the UK’s biggest ever cyber fraud must serve another two years in jail for plotting to get his hands on £500,000 in an identical con from his prison cell.
Feezan Hameed, 26, was jailed for 11 years last September for heading a “vishing” scam which conned 750 customers across the UK out of £113 million.
Hameed, from Glasgow, partied with popstars while splurging on Rolex watches, expensive jewellery and trips to Dubai.
Nicknamed “Fizzy”, the conman also owned a fleet of luxury cars, including a Bentley and Lamborghini, as more than £2m rolled in from the scam each month.
He was so obsessive over his collection of cars he even flew car polishers 8,000 miles from Scotland to Pakistan to polish his Porsches parked outside his villa in Lahore.
Police later found an image of the fraudster shopping over Facetime while one of his cronies held the phone to show him jeans.
His younger brother, and the gang’s accountant, Nouman Choudhary, 22, was jailed for three-and-a-half years for conspiracy to launder some of the ill-gotten cash through property investments in Scotland and Pakistan.
Victims were contacted by hustlers pretending to be from the Lloyds or RBS anti-fraud department who would dupe them into revealing their account details. These were then raided for vast sums of money which were quickly transferred through a string of mule accounts provided by crooked bank employees before being withdrawn from branches and ATMs – often just hours after the original fraud.
Whilst on remand for that fraud, Hameed and Choudhary had been sharing a cell at HMP Wandsworth.
That cell was searched on April 24 last year revealing a “dirty phone”, SIM card and scrap of paper noting four account numbers among other contraband. One SIM was used to make more than 40 calls, with one getting through to precious metals traders The Lawrence Group.
A director at the firm chatted to Hameed who spent more than an hour-and-a-half unsuccessfully trying to persuade him to replicate a fictitious suspect payment.
Hameed admitted a single count of conspiracy to defraud at Southwark Crown Court last month.
Using 34 sample offences from the previous trial, prosecutor Tim Hunter assessed the intended loss through the conspiracy to be in the region of £500,000.
Judge Peter Testar said of the fraudster: “He understands the banking system very well. He is somebody who has a very pleasant and persuasive manner.
“In fact, I heard a telephone conversation where during the course of an hour he talked somebody into losing over £1million.
“He knows what he is doing – as I say, he understands the banking system – and he is obviously playing for high stakes.”
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