15th
Jun 2015
A director of an Ilford company has received a three year sentence for producing hundreds of bogus tenancy agreements in a conspiracy to defraud.
The 38 year old was the only director of an energy brokering company dealing with British Gas and E.ON and supplied them with hundreds of fake tenancy agreements, leaving the energy giants with debts of hundreds of thousands pounds.
The City of London Police started their investigations into the company in May 2013, when both British Gas and E.ON contacted them over the unpaid bills.
Senior Fraud Investigator for British Gas, Carol Bucknall, said: "Nawaz sought to profit illegally from encouraging customers to switch supplier, believing his methods would avoid our detection,
“But his unusual activities were identified by our Financial Crime Department, whose job it is to protect our business and our customers from the small minority of individuals who unfortunately try to manipulate the system.”
Nawaz’s company had for many years contacted thousands of electricity, business and domestic gas customers; informing them that if they changed their names on tenancy agreements, that they would get away with not having to pay their existing energy bills when switching suppliers.
His company made tens of thousands of pounds in commission payments from this scam, his team would falsely claim to be customers so that changes in tenancy agreements would be backed up by supplying the energy companies with mobile phone numbers, for the fictional new tenants.
Investigators finally saw through the fraud when they realized that many of the new tenants sounded very alike. The police charged into the Barking office and discovered hundreds of sim cards and mobile phones that had names stuck onto them with tenants’ names. They also uncovered one hundred false passports.
The director when taken down for questioning, gave the excuse that it was “a cut throat business” and that is why he had been responsible for the bogus tenancy agreements to con the energy companies.
Nawaz also tried to go back on his statement by claiming he needed an Urdu translator as he had misunderstood the ‘barrage’ of questions.
Detective Constable Paul Kirk of the City of London Police, said “Nawaz exploited the system in a way that he thought would provide a foolproof way for his company to earn tens of thousands of pounds in commission from one energy provider while saddling another with hundreds of thousands of pounds of unpaid debts,
“Unfortunately for Nawaz this manipulation of the energy supply market unravelled when put under the microscope by the City of London Police and fraud investigators from British Gas and E.ON, ultimately leading to him swapping a life of business for a life behind bars.”
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