Three men who posed as bank employees to steal hundreds of thousands of pounds from vulnerable pensioners will be sentenced in November.
Duncan Currie, 42, Ahsan Shahid, 41, and Sean Singh, 21, all admitted defrauding dozens of pensioners between October 2022 and November 2024.
Fraud scheme details
The men appeared at the High Court in Glasgow on Friday, where judge Lord Renucci called for pre-sentencing reports ahead of a sentencing hearing on November 20.
During Friday’s hearing, advocate depute Scott McKenzie explained the scam had involved “considerable planning”, and the fraudsters had used residential telephone directories to get the names, addresses and contact details of targets.
The victims were aged from around 65 into their 90s and lived mainly in Scotland’s central belt.
Modus operandi
Mr McKenzie said: “The modus operandi of the group was to initiate contact with intended victims by telephone, while pretending to be a police officer, bank fraud investigator or fraud department staff.
“The caller would explain to the victim that there had been alleged misuse of their cards or bank account.
“Many of the victims were provided with bogus telephone numbers to call to verify the alleged frauds.”
He said the victims were then persuaded to “assist in alleged ‘investigations’ or stings” into suspected bank employees by withdrawing large sums of money, typically between £6,000 and £8,000.
A courier, often carrying a fake ID, would then meet the victim and take the money, pretending they would be safeguarding it.
A number of the group’s victims were induced to repeat this process multiple times, with some handing over tens of thousands of pounds.
Impact on victims
In some cases, Mr McKenzie said, victims were duped into transferring money into “mule” accounts, or to purchase high-value goods including Rolex watches and gold bullion.
Some of the victims’ bank cards were also obtained by the group “on the pretence of being compromised”, and used to buy goods including luxury clothing, Apple devices, and, on one occasion, a motorcycle.
Mr McKenzie said the group created the “veneer of legitimacy” by forging documents including a passport, driving licence, bank employee documents, and a fake NHS ID.
They also instructed their victims “not to tell their family or police about the investigation”.
The court was told one of the group’s victims, who is now deceased, was defrauded out of nearly £56,000 after being targeted by the group in late 2022.
The woman, who was then aged 77, had been called “repeatedly” on her landline by a man claiming to be a fraud investigator, and induced to make multiple trips to banks in Glasgow and Motherwell to withdraw cash and hand it to a courier.
The fraudsters also persuaded her to buy a gold Rolex watch, and one of her bank accounts was used in an attempt to order gold bullion online.
Mr McKenzie said when officers first approached the woman, she appeared “stressed and exhausted by the preceding events” and that she told them she was “struggling to cope”.
Another of the group’s victims was defrauded out of more than £19,000 in October 2024 after being contacted by a man claiming to be from the “Bank of Scotland fraud department”.
The man, who was aged 83 at the time, was told his bank card had been cloned, and he was persuaded to withdraw the money as part of a bogus fraud investigation.
Telephone records later showed the man had been contacted 80 times over a four-day period from a number attributed to Shahid.
Investigation and next steps
A police investigation codenamed Operation Hatpin identified a property in East Kilbride as the “hub” of the group’s activities, with Singh and Shahid being seen leaving the property at times relevant to the offending.
Mobile phones, sim cards and a computer linked to the fraud were all found at the address, and Shahid and Singh were also carrying mobiles linked with many of the fraudulent schemes when they were arrested.
The investigation found that over a two-year period, 376 telephone calls had been made to one of the bogus numbers used by the group, with Mr McKenzie saying this showed “potentially hundreds of potential targets” had called it in the belief they were contacting their bank.
At the end of the hearing, Lord Renucci called for criminal justice social work reports on the accused to be prepared ahead of sentencing.
Singh, Shahid and Currie, who were present in court wearing black tops, were ordered to remain in custody.
