LONDON: An Indian-origin fraudster posing as a automobile salesman has been jailed for 9 years by a UK court docket for defrauding over 200 unsuspecting automobile consumers out of greater than 1 million kilos. 30-year-old Ravinder Singh Randhawa was imprisoned for 22 offences of fraud and one offence of cash laundering at Exeter Crown Courtroom in south-west England final Friday.
In keeping with the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Randhawa was the chief of the pretend automobile promoting operation, posing as a professional salesman to influence his victims to pay massive sums of cash for second-hand automobiles.
“Randhawa is a prolific and serial offender, preying on trusting members of the general public merely wishing to purchase second-hand vehicles. His crimes had been refined,” stated Sarah Melo, Specialist Prosecutor for the CPS Specialist Fraud Division.
“He typically used identities obtained from earlier victims, hijacked the id of garages and real automobiles on the market, in order that his victims didn’t suspect his rip-off,” Melo stated. A whole bunch of individuals have suffered by the hands of Randhawa and misplaced cash which they might ill-afford.
His crimes have had a profound impression on so lots of their lives, she stated. “Many described the extreme impact on their psychological and bodily well being, their household relationships and general monetary stability. For a lot of of his victims this occurred at a time when their lives had been badly affected by the pandemic,” she stated.
Randhawa typically bought the identical car greater than as soon as and the victims obtained nothing as he pocketed their cash. Some victims drove for miles to gather their new automobile solely to find that the storage from which they’d bought the car didn’t exist.
These helping Randhawa to launder his ill-gotten beneficial properties, Atif Shariff (30) and Jason Gilbert (55) had been sentenced to twenty months and 27 months’ imprisonment respectively for his or her half within the rip-off operation. Melo stated the CPS labored with Devonshire and Cornwall Police labored collectively to deliver the offenders to justice.
“Randhawa confirmed no regret for his actions. He would typically chuckle at his victims and goad them with abusive messages as soon as they found they had been victims of his fraud,” she stated. “He boasted to at least one sufferer who’d threatened to name the police that, he’d ‘been doing it for years and the police would not do something about it’. He was mistaken,” she added.
The CPS stated it’s now working to get well as a lot of the stolen cash as doable from Randhawa and his accomplices to be able to strip them of their legal profit and return the cash to their rightful homeowners.
