Three men have pleaded guilty at Bradford Crown Court to fabricating a car accident in order to claim over £36,000 in damages, the City of London Police has announced. Data from a telematics box in one of the convict’s cars led to the discovery that the accident was staged.
Shazad Saddique, of Leeds, and Humayou Qureshi, of Birmingham, were sentenced to 20 months in prison, while Taimoor Khan, also of Birmingham, was sentenced to a 200-hour community order.
Qureshi had a fully comprehensive car insurance policy with Insure The Box for his Peugeot. As part of the policy, he was required to install a telematics box in his car.
On February 28, 2014, he contacted Insure The Box to make a claim for damage to his car after being involved in a car accident the night before on Killinghall Road in Bradford.
Qureshi said he was emerging from a side road when he collided with the passenger side of a BMW driven by Siddique. He reported damage in the front passenger side of his Peugeot and in the passenger door of Saddique’s BMW. He also said there were two others in his Peugeot – his two children and Khan. Authorities later found that Khan was the only passenger.
Between March and June 2014, his solicitors contacted Insure The Box concerning claims for damages to the car and personal injuries for himself and the two alleged passengers.
“Khan stated that there were two people in Qureshi’s Peugeot, which contradicted Qureshi’s claim,” said the City of London Police in a statement.
Insure The Box spoke to Qureshi, who confirmed the collision and said that the other driver was very aggressive towards him, even though he apologised. Qureshi claimed that he did not know Saddique and that they had never met prior to the incident, nor had they been in contact since.
An analysis of data from the Peugeot’s telematics box and a police investigation established that the accident had not occurred in the way it had been reported and that it had been staged. Data revealed that the crash events did occur – but they took place within an industrial area off of Leeds Road/Thornbury Avenue in Bradford, and not on Killinghall Road.
An independent review conducted at the request of the insurance firm also found inconsistencies in Qureshi’s statements compared to data from the telematics box. There was compelling evidence to state that the two vehicles may have been in a collision, but that the BMW was stationary or moving extremely slowly when hit, according to an engineer’s report.
“The actions of a few can affect the car insurance industry as a whole, pushing law abiding citizen’s insurance premiums up,” said City of London Police’s Detective Constable Eva Woods. “This case however shows that those who take advantage of the insurance industry will not go unpunished.”
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