'Ghost brokers' set up fake call centre and duped buyers into buying bogus car insurance by using iPod to play background office noise
- Danyal Buckharee, 42, and Giovanni Recchia, 47, set up elaborate scheme
- They duped buyers into purchasing worthless car insurance by using iPod
- Pair - jailed today at Old Bailey - used sponsored adverts on Google
- More than 600 people conned into paying £680,000 for worthless insurance
A pair of ‘ghost brokers’ set up a fake call centre and duped buyers into purchasing worthless car insurance by using an iPod to play background office noise.
Danyal Buckharee, 42, and Giovanni Recchia, 47, set up the elaborate scheme from a luxury riverside apartment in south London.
The pair - who were jailed today at the Old Bailey - used sponsored adverts on Google offering premiums 15 per cent cheaper than average to lure their victims in.
Danyal Buckharee (left), 42, and Giovanni Recchia (right), 47, set up an elaborate scheme, in which they duped buyers into buying worthless car insurance by using an iPod to play background office noise
More than 600 people were conned into paying up to £680,000 for worthless insurance.
Buckharee, who masterminded the scam, was jailed for three years.
Recchia, who was recruited by Buckharee to run one of the four sites involved, was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.
Sentencing Buckharee, the judge, Recorder Joanna Greenberg QC said: ‘Young, inexperienced, hard-up new drivers were your primary target.
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‘The people were driving around uninsured because of your activities. Your records show you have chosen fraud as a way of life.
‘I have little doubt that you will return to that life upon your release. The least sentence I can pass is three years.’
The judge told Recchia: ‘I have little doubt that you would never have become involved in anything of this sort had you not had the misfortune to meet Mr Buckharee in prison.
‘I take into account your profit from it was limited and you were under the direction of Mr Buckharee.’
Detectives smashed the ‘fraud factory’ after the Motor Insurers Bureau received complaints about three car insurance websites - Aston Midshires Insurance, Astuto Insurance and Car Insurance Warehouse - in October 2011.
Inside the so called 'fraud factory'. More than 600 people were conned into paying up to £680,000 for worthless insurance in under a year
Detectives investigated after the Motor Insurers Bureau received complaints about three car insurance websites - Aston Midshires Insurance, Astuto Insurance and Car Insurance Warehouse - in 2011. They then found a fourth website, First Car Direct Insurance
When officers from the City of London Police’s Fraud Enforcement Department raided Bukharee’s flat in Battersea, they discovered he had set up a fourth website, First Car Direct Insurance.
The apartment had been equipped with office equipment, bank cards, chequebooks, mobile phones.
Buckharee invented a whole host of staff to deal with customer enquiries and payments - including one named after the head of the City of London Police’s insurance fraud department.
The illusion of a busy, legitimate company was maintained by playing a track called ‘Office Noise’ through an iPod connected to loudspeakers.
Further investigation revealed around 600 drivers in total fell victim to the fraud involving all four websites.
Car Insurance Warehouse and Astuto Insurance had earned £51,271.66 between May and August 2011.
The First Car Direct website, one of a number which offered fake car insurance
The third website, Aston Midshires Insurance, made nearly £600,000 from more than 500 drivers between September 2011 and January 2012.
In the three weeks that the First Car Direct website was up and running, thirty-eight customers had already paid a total of £40,773.12 for car insurance.
Miss Mulligan said: ‘This was a sophisticated fraud and it was masterminded by Danyal Buckharee.
‘He used the four ghost broking websites to carry out car insurance fraud. He was responsible for setting up the websites, each of them purporting to offer genuine motor insurance at around a 15 per cent discount below the average price offered by genuine companies.
‘Unsuspecting members of the public were duped into buying this non-existent car insurance and paying money for it.
‘What he identified was he could target innocent members of the public, in particular young first time drivers for whom insurance premiums are extremely high, often inhibitively so.’
Recchia was recruited by Bukharee to run the First Car Direct fraud from the flat by answering phones and dealing with customer enquiries.
He claimed that he was led to believe that it was a genuine business.
A series of bank accounts were used to launder the money paid in by the victims.
Buckharee, from Putney, south London, admitted two counts of fraud by false representation and three counts of money laundering earlier this year.
He received three years in prison.
Recchia, of Retford, Nottinghamshire, was convicted of one count of fraud by false representation and received 12 months imprisonment.
Mohamed Saleh, 26, of Greenford, northwest London, denied money laundering and was earlier acquitted.
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