£40,000 scam gang jailed after targetting victims in Bedfordshire

A CONMAN caged for his part in a “highly sophisticated” scam carried out across eight counties cannot complain about his tough sentence.

Mohammed Miah, 23, was part of a gang which targeted credit card holders in an elaborate and intricately planned con.

Gang members would telephone their intended victims posing as police officers – claiming that their credit cards had been “compromised”.

It was then Miah’s role to act as “courier” for the gang, turning up in cars at the the victims’ homes so their cards could be collected.

The gang netted a total of around £40,000 using such methods, with many of their exploited victims living in Bedfordshire.

Miah, of Coopers Lane, Camden, was jailed for three years and seven months at St Albans Crown Court in February.

But his case reached the Appeal Court as his lawyers challenged his sentence, which they claimed was far too harsh.

Judge Peter Rook QC said Miah’s essential role was to “provide the cars for collecting the credit cards”, although “the idea for the fraud was not his”.

He accepted driving to the pick-up point to collect credit cards, but said he never actually got out of his car.

But the judge who sentenced him said there was “little to distinguish the individual roles” played by the gang, which had “operated as a team”.

Judge Rook, sitting with Lord Justice McCombe and Mr Justice Foskett, said there had been “high victim impact both financially and otherwise”.

The scam also involved a “significant degree of planning”.

Miah had shown remorse for his crime and there was strong personal mitigation in his case, the court heard.

But Judge Rook concluded: “This was serious and cynical criminality which demanded a severe sentence.

“The sentence may have been severe, but it was not excessive.”