Four men have been sentenced for their roles in a sophisticated text message scam that targeted London Underground passengers, with one defendant laundering £600,000 through gift cards, a court has heard.
The fraudsters used homemade 'SMS blasters' hidden inside suitcases, which were wheeled around the Tube network. Travellers who walked past the devices received fake messages about a failed parcel delivery, with a link that invited them to input their details. The aim was to 'plunder their bank accounts', Inner London Crown Court was told.
Prosecutor Alex Davidson said that although it was difficult to quantify the total gains from the texting scheme, 'top boss' Zhijia Fan, 48, had personally benefited more than £100,000. Co-defendant Gatis Lauks, 25, laundered around £600,000 by purchasing gift cards using stolen bank details, for which he received 5% commission and personally made about £30,000.
Lauks initially gave a 'no comment' interview to police in May 2025 but later confessed, revealing he was recruited in June or July 2024. He used an app loaded with stolen bank details to buy up to 100 gift cards per day, purchasing items including clothes, Pokemon cards, Louis Vuitton goods and video games. He was also sent to France to assess the feasibility of running the scam on the Paris Metro, but this was rejected as the country 'did not have the same vulnerabilities' as England.
Fan, of Winchester Street in Acton, was jailed for four years and eight months. Daoyan Shang, 20, of Caxton Road, Shepherd's Bush, was jailed for two years and ten months. Wan Hafiz, 41, of Queensway in Paddington, was jailed for 14 months for conspiracy to defraud and 10 weeks for possession of articles for use in fraud, with both sentences to run concurrently. He also faces deportation as he is not a British national. Lauks, of Ealing, was sentenced to two years, suspended for two years, for fraud by false representation.
Another suspect, Jinhua Zhang, 58, remains on the run after fleeing when released on bail. Detective Inspector Tim Weekes of British Transport Police said: 'These organised scammers concealed SMS blasters in suitcases in a bid to plunder the bank accounts of unsuspecting commuters. Their plot to defraud passengers was foiled by one of our vigilant detectives, who was off duty when he spotted the device at a London Tube station.'
