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Two brothers jailed for stealing from unsuspecting elderly people (1 February 2013)

Date: 01/02/2013
Duncan Lewis, Legal News Solicitors, Two brothers jailed for stealing from unsuspecting elderly people

Two brothers Shilu Miah, 31 and Dulu Miah, 26, who used confidential information passed on by a bank insider to steal elderly and vulnerable people’s life savings from 218 accounts have been jailed.
The siblings masterminded £244,000 fraud from their council house bedroom. They spent most of the cash from the 12 month scam on luxury holidays, cars and designer clothes, the Blackfriars Crown Court heard.
They also splurged the loot on shopping at Selfridges and Harrods and as well as drinking champagne at nightclubs in London’s West End.
The modus operandi of the duo was to call the victims on the phone pretending to be from their bank and get vital details such as a pin number, and then a taxi was sent to the victim’s house to pick up the bank card and deliver it to the gang.
The cards were then used to either siphon cash out of the person's account or open up a loan.
Judge Aidan Marron, QC said that the brothers had not shown a bit of remorse when they were being jailed.
The judge said that the two resorted to making sinister threats to persuade the elderly victims from north London to hand over bank cards and details.
Judge Marron told them the pair had some access to private and confidential bank information, as such information could have come only from the confidential filed in a bank.
'The conspiracy lasted for about 12 months, involving about 220 different cases and the loss in the region of a quarter of a million pounds was occasioned.'
They used their parents' council home in King's Cross as the nerve centre of their fraud.
Shilu Miah even set up a bogus 0845 number at their house from which at least 218 victims were called by men posing as bank staff.
Police launched a string of raids on July 5 last year to smash the complex crime ring after carrying out a huge investigation.
The elder of the two brothers Shilu Miah was jailed for manslaughter in 2002 and was found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud and convicted of being in possession of criminal property after a weeklong trial. He was jailed for six years and his younger brother Dulu was jailed for four years and three months for admitting one count of conspiracy to commit fraud.
The scam, known as 'courier fraud', is still rife in Camden, with more than 100 cases reported to police every week.
The two were accused of having no regard for their victims in as much as that they not only took their victims lifesavings without flinching but then even taunted and verbally abused some of them.

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