Livingston conman stole £8m from banks

Nov 19 2009 by Alistair Watson, West Lothian Courier

A LIVINGSTON conman who duped high street banks into handing over more than £8million has been jailed for nine years.

Frageand Naseem, 32, used various accents to con staff at banks and international companies into transferring vast sums of money to him.

The father-of-four, who also almost succeeded in stealing £106million in another scam before it was foiled, carried out his scheme from an Edinburgh internet cafe armed with just a pay-as-you-go mobile and library card.

In total Naseem stole £8.2million between June 2005 and March 2006, of which £6million is still missing.

Apart from a five-bedroom house in Livingston and a leased Range Rover, Naseem did not appear to live a lavish lifestyle and police fear the missing millions are stashed in secret foreign bank accounts.

Croydon Crown Court in Surrey heard Naseem spent four years building up titbits of information about banks’ major corporate clients’ accounts.

Then, posing as employees of the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC, he persuaded firms to reveal confidential banking information.

The fraudster then contacted banks claiming to be an account holder from companies including Syrian Arab Airlines, the Shinhan Bank in Japan and Bank of Korea.

Staff were duped into changing account details and diverting large sums of money into Naseem’s personal accounts in Dubai.

Once he had the cash he would telephone the banks and laugh at them, the court was told.

A judge rejected his defence that he was a paranoid schizophrenic who was acting under the influence of a 400-year-old man called ‘Schofield’.

Judge Timothy Stow QC said Naseem had acted alone to commit ‘sophisticated’ frauds.

The fraudster was arrested by City of London Police in an internet cafe in April 2006 after he telephoned his mother from the phone he used to commit the crimes.

Using his library card as ID to enter the cafe, he was caught sending fraudulent e-mails to banks and had the mobile phone and a notebook with details about bank staff.

Nassem pleaded guilty to five offences of obtaining money transfers by deception, defrauding £8.2million from national and international banks.

Naseem, who had spent time in a psychiatric institution in 2001, was charged with two similar offences in 2003 when he allegedly walked into two London banks and tried to defraud them of £4million but the charges were later dropped.