A conman was jailed for six months at Preston City Crown Court this week today following a conviction for duping ‘no-win-no fee‘ law firm in a ellaborate car insurance scam.
The accused told a pack of lies to solicitors, claiming he wanted legal representation to claim compensation for a car accident he had been in and wanted a large amount of damages. In return for instructing them, he convinced the law firm to stump up an initial payment of £1,700 pending an award.
Lancashire Police investigated 17 similar cases involving Imran Shah, 39 but curiously, most of the law firms refused to cooperate with officers which is a mystery in itself. In one particular case mentioned at his trial, Shah is said to have bizarrely pretended to lawyers that he was a hospital surgeon seeking a £500,000 damages pay-out.
As part of their investigation, Police approached a 11 law firms but none were willing to assist the officers. The twelfth firm fortunately agreed to co-operate with detectives approached admitting Shah had duped them into representing him when he falsely claimed he had suffered severe injuries in a car crash.
The solicitors had paid him a total of £1,700 in initial ‘referral fees’ before realising Shah, from Blackburn, Lancashire, had invented the story.
The impact statement read to the court by the head of Parmar & Co Solicitors detailed: ‘The defendant engaged with my firm over a period of time and deceived myself and my colleague into believing he was injured and we expended time and money seeing him.
‘He obtained the money by deception on two separate occasions. He also used the firm as a conduit to complex fraud, damaging the reputation of my business.
‘It was an embarrassment to me personally and my business. He was calculated, deceitful and remorseless.” continued the legal principle
‘He wasted valuable time and money of my firm which could have been spent helping genuinely injured and innocent victims.’
At Preston Crown Court, Imran Shah who was university educated was alleged to have a large number of different aliases. Before the court he admitted fraud but only received a six month prison term with prosecutors pointing out that this crime is probably ‘just the tip of the iceberg.’
The court heard Shah’s criminal activities began when he took out an insurance policy on three cars for a company he was said to be running called Corporate Security, based in Manchester.
