Three convicted fraudsters who successfully conned five directors at Aviva, the insurer, out of a combined £638,000 have been sent to jail, City of London police said today.
The three men, all from Woolwich in south east London, have previously been found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud against the unnamed Aviva bosses, police said.
They used publicly available information from Companies House and a chain of false bank accounts to trick call centre operators in India to hand over details of the directors’ life assurance policies, they said.
Last Tuesday, Southwark Crown Court sentenced Gideon Komolafe, 36, and Simon Kogoro, 40, to four and a half years in jail. The following day, Wilton Clarke, 49, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, City police said.
It is the latest example of police cracking down on suspected financial crime, often in conjunction with regulators at the Financial Services Authority.
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DC Jeffrey Gettings, from the City of London Police Economic Crime Directorate, said: “The prison sentence handed to these three men should be a serious warning to others. If you are convicted of fraud you can expect a number of years in jail.”
During the trial in May, the court heard how, in 2006, the three men used personal information on the Aviva directors to contact UK and Indian call centre operators. Using directors’ details, they tricked the operators into handing over the account numbers for their life policies.
The fraudsters then cashed in the policies, transferring £638,000 in fraudulent bank accounts set up in the directors’ names, police said.
The money was transferred again into business accounts in the names of Mr Kogoro and Mr Clarke, and finally into the two men’s personal bank accounts.
The transfer triggered a fraud alert at Aviva, which launched an investigation and later called in City of London Police.
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Officers soon uncovered the fake accounts, which led them directly to the guilty parties, police said.
Mr Komolafe was arrested in July 2007 and his home was searched. Further evidence was uncovered that he and Mr Clarke had already commited a similar crime against a customer of a high street bank, police said.
A total of £150,000 had been transferred from this account, but the bank detected the crime and the money was returned, police said.