Jailed fraudster admits running same cold-caller con from behind bars

The jailed kingpin behind a multimillion-pound fraud has admitted attempting to run an almost identical con from behind bars.

Feezan "Fizzy" Hameed, 26, ran a voice-based phishing fraud which claimed 750 RBS group victims (mainly small businesses such as accountants and solicitors) and resulted in loses of £113m. He used his ill-gotten gains to maintain a luxury lifestyle featuring a fleet of luxury cars, extravagant partying and trips to Dubai. His decadence even extended to flying people over to Pakistan to polish Porsches parked outside his villa in Lahore.

The scam, which made £2m a week at its peak, had fraudsters posing as representatives of either Lloyds' or RBS's anti-fraud department fool victims into revealing their account details. Accounts were looted and transferred to mule accounts before the lion's share of the proceeds were remitted to Fizzy. Three insiders at Lloyds were convicted of supplying information in furtherance of the fraud, the Daily Telegraph reports.

The authorities eventually caught up and Hameed, from Glasgow, was jailed for 11 years last September. His brother Nouman Choudhary, 22, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years for conspiracy to launder the proceeds of crime through property investments in Scotland and Pakistan. Fizzy continued offending while in prison awaiting trial.

Hameed admitted conspiracy to defraud in relation to an identical string of bank frauds at a hearing before Southwark Crown Court, London, last Thursday. As before, the fraud involved tricking bank customers into handing over confidential bank details and security information.

Judge Peter Testar remanded Hameed in custody ahead of sentence hearing over his latest offending, scheduled for 28 June. ®