Swindon student found guilty of money laundering over sophisticated phone scam

Mohamed Sharif, a student from Swindon, was found guilty of money laundering.

The 24-year-old was given £250 to pass his bank details on to the gang who were running the frauds. This information was then used to set up nine new bank accounts in his name which received money from an unsuspecting victim in his 70s.

Now police are warning other students in Wiltshire to beware of being recruited by the gangs behind similar scams.

On June 10 in 2018, the victim was called by a member of the gang pretending to be his bank, Nationwide.

They told him their system was under attack from hackers and he needed to move his money into secure accounts to prevent them from getting to it.

Despite being sceptical, the victim was persuaded to make transfers totalling £21,500 to 18 different accounts, 10 of them belonging to Sharif meaning £11,000 was transferred to accounts in his name.

The fraud was intercepted that afternoon by Nationwide’s Online Fraud Detection System and the bank called the victim to break the bad news.

On that same afternoon, Sharif headed to London and made a number of withdrawals from cash points and Foreign Currency Exchanges totalling £13,592.26.

When he was arrested and interviewed in October, 2018, Sharif claimed he had no idea his account was being used to commit fraud but was asked to withdraw the money from various travel exchanges before handing it over. He denied receiving any payment.

During his trial, Sharif admitted lying to police, the bank and within his defence statement for trial.

Det Con Rachael Fairbairn, from Wiltshire Police’s Complex Fraud Team, said: "This is a very sad case as the victim's family say he was meticulous when it came to making sure his financial information was secure and would regularly shred any sensitive documents. They told me that the fraud caused him a lot of stress and they believe this was a contributory factor in his death a few months later.

"It's caused them a huge amount of distress and they're feeling the effects of those phone calls to this very day.

"There's no doubt in my mind that Mohamed Sharif made some really stupid decisions here. He was studying for a finance degree and for the sake of £250, he's lost any chance of working in that sector and it will take him years, if not decades to rebuild his credit rating and access to mainstream bank accounts.

"He tried to claim he had no idea that this was fraudulent but anyone with any sense would steer clear of this type of offer.

"His story should act as a warning because students are being targeted by these gangs because they think students don't have much money and they don't have the nous to say no. Our advice is simple - if someone offers you money in exchange for your bank details, don't give them away. If you do, and you suspect your account is being used for fraud, then that is an offence of money laundering, even if you have no knowledge of or involvement in the original fraud.

"This type of crime is still taking place now. In fact, I saw a post on a Swindon social media group recently where someone talked about how they were nearly a victim of this scam and they were nearly caught out.

" There is some very simple advice to stop this from happening to you and that's to make sure you have good passwords, up to date anti-viral software on your phone and computers and to question every cold call you get, even if it looks like it comes from a trusted number"

Sharif has been given a three-year community order, which includes a 150-hour unpaid work requirement, and ordered to pay £85 to fund victim services.