Council worker escapes jail

7:10am Thursday 7th August 2008

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A COUNCIL worker, who was ‘fooled’ into joining a gang of criminals claiming pay-outs for fictitious car accidents, has escaped jail.

Umbreen Rahman, 33, a community development officer for Hillingdon Borough Council, was part of the first group of car insurance fraudsters to be successfully cracked in the UK.

The 13 groundbreaking convictions were the conclusion of a two-year investigation by Hertfordshire Police’s Serious and Organised Crime Unit.

The gang would have pocketed a total of around £250,000 in damage pay-outs, loss of earnings, injury claims and hire cars after staging the accidents, but police intercepted most of the claims.

The mother-of-one, whose two brothers Booby Gul and Umear Gul led the gang, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud an insurance company after pretending to be responsible for a car accident that never happened in August 2005.

Defence barrister Rajiv Menon told Judge Martin Griffiths how Raman, currently on maternity leave, had been suffering from post natal depression since the birth of her four month-old daughter and that her marriage is in crisis.

He added that her career was also in tatters as she would loose her job as ‘no local authority would accept to take her with a conviction for conspiracy to fraud.’ The Judge said: “The woman in this case have been completely fooled into doing this by certain men.

"This was a complicated fraud organised by your brother. Had he not been your brother you would have had nothing to do with it. It’s a great shame for you that you were foolish enough to go along with this."

Rahman received a 16 week suspended sentence at St Albans Crown Court.

Bobby and Amear Gul, from Watford, would sell on cars to friends or relatives days before the alleged accident took place and hand them scripts of what to say when making a claim.

The offending car would usually be damaged by driving it into a brick wall or smashing it with a JCB bucket, but the second vehicle would be left unharmed – despite a claim for damages being made. A friend and car recovery agent would then claim to have towed away the car.

Over an eight month period six car accidents were staged across Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

Detective Constable Jullian Griffiths, who worked on the case, said: “This is the first time a group like this has been prosecuted. The judge had no case law to look at.

“It was a long and difficult process. We had nothing to draw from and some of our techniques were untested.”

The team was guided by the Insurance Fraud Bureau, which was formed in July 2006 to clamp down on insurance fraud.

Detective Sergeant Steve Hynes, who led the case, added: “This is a really serious problem, but it’s not really recognised as type of crime by most forces.

“We are trying to show forces how serious this is – when you look at the amount of money involved which then goes on to be laundered you see how serious the implications are.

“It’s becoming more dangerous and that could result in serious injuries, or even deaths.”

The Agul brothers are serving a two-and-a-half year prison term each.