Fraudster whose gang bribed delivery drivers in scam is jailed

A fraudster whose gang bribed Tesco delivery drivers to stage accidents in a £1.3m 'crash for cash' scam against the supermarket has been jailed after having a friend appear as him in court because he was more 'confident'.

The bribed delivery drivers staged car crashes and then claimed insurance payments - and were paid as little as £200 per 'accident'.

Hotel receptionist Shahin Mouradi, 24, was one of dozens involved in the scam which the judge slammed as a type of 'organised crime' that pushes up prices on supermarket shelves, resulting in the 'cost of modern living being higher than it should be.'

In total, 27 people, including the drivers, were hauled before the courts following a mammoth operation and Tesco won damages and costs payments totalling almost £2million from fraudsters. Each person was ordered to pay around £18,000.

A group of around twelve drivers reportedly orchestrated over fifty orchestrated accidents, but Tesco's lawyers said they suspected that around 100 people were involved between 2019 and 2020.

Mouradi, who was ordered to pay a total of over £60,000, has also now been jailed for 15 months for contempt of court.

He lied about his involvement and getting a more 'confident' friend to impersonate him during a hearing in December 2020 in a bid to dodge justice.

In one of her judgments on the case, the judge described it as 'a fraud and conspiracy of unprecedented scale, which has engaged this court in five weeks of continuous Tesco litigation.'

The High Court heard the scam - described by lawyers as 'the UK's largest ever civil motor fraud operation' - had focused on Tesco's delivery depot in Greenford, west London.

In total, Tesco received 32 separate claims, with 19 being 'repudiated' without going to court and another 13 going before Judge Heather Baucher at Central London County Court over several weeks last year.

Having uncovered the frauds, Tesco countersued 27 individuals in the 13 cases, with Judge Baucher awarding the company over £650,000 in damages, as well as costs of £1.25million against those involved.

In Mouradi's case, he had claimed compensation as the owner of a Mercedes which was involved in a crash with a Tesco van in Enfield Road, Brentford, west London, in October 2019.

As Tesco began to suspect the truth about the crash, Mouradi embarked on a campaign of dishonesty, enlisting a friend to impersonate him during a 2020 video link hearing in a bid to dodge justice.

Mrs Justice Collins Rice said he had done so because he thought the man's 'maturity, leadership, confidence and familiarity with legal issues' could help him get out of his predicament.

The man, claiming to be Mouradi, said he was unable to show his face on camera and instead conducted the hearing by voice alone as he falsely blamed others - including a respected law firm - for the fraudulent claim, which he said he knew nothing about.

But alarm bells were raised by an observer, who told the judge that the man speaking was not Shahin Mouradi, with a voice recognition expert later saying there was 'extremely strong support' for a conclusion that it was not Mouradi who had spoken.

Despite being found out, Mouradi continued to lie, insisting it was he who had spoken, and then lied again when he changed his story to say that, while he knew about the claim, he was not involved in the staged crash itself.

He was ultimately found by Judge Baucher to have engaged in deceit and conspiracy in relation to the staged accident and ordered to pay Tesco abut £24,000 compensation and another £37,500 towards its lawyers' bills.

Tesco then hauled him to the High Court, where he has now been jailed for 15 months for contempt of court in relation to his lies and his use of an impersonator.

Sentencing him, the judge said Mouradi got mixed up in the sort of organised crime which 'drives up prices in supermarkets, increases insurance premiums and makes the cost of modern living higher than it should be.'

'Issuing a false compensation claim in the first place indicated a lack of honesty and a lack of respect for court proceedings,' she said.

'You tried to hide your wrongdoing by lying on oath and protesting that you knew nothing. Then you lied on oath with a new story trying to blame others.

'The impersonation itself was a flagrant and sustained deception of the court even without the subsequent lies about it on oath.

'This was a sustained course of lying on oath to the court, in pleadings and witness statements, and in oral evidence.'

She said that, as his lies unravelled, instead of confessing, he had instead 'doubled down and got deeper and deeper into untruth,' embarking on a 'persistent and escalating course of conduct of trying to conceal wrongdoing.'

'This was an attack on justice itself,' she said.

'This is a course of conduct of high culpability, sustained over a protracted period of time. Episodes of impersonation, lying on oath and in the witness box constituted flagrant contempts in the face of the court.

'That and the making of a false witness statement in the contempt proceedings themselves mean the blameworthiness of this conduct is flagrant and self evident.'

She concluded: 'The minimum sentence I am able to pass on you, commensurate with the seriousness of the course of conduct and in order to restore public confidence in justice and deter others from following your shocking example, is a period of imprisonment of 15 months.'

Tesco's lawyers said that the numerous claims against it could have resulted in compensation payments totalling around £1.3m being made if it had not uncovered the scam.