Highlights
- A former Met officer has pleaded guilty to staging car crashes and making fraudulent insurance claims.
- Kuldip Singh was dismissed for gross misconduct in 2017 and extradited from Georgia last month.
- His four co-suspects remain at large.
AN ASIAN former police officer has pleaded guilty to his part in a "crash for cash" scam, involving fraudulent personal injury claims after deliberate vehicle crashes in the UK.
British Indian Kuldip Singh, 42, was a Metropolitan Police officer when he got involved with a group which organised pre-arranged collisions with vehicles and then made fraudulent claims for compensation from insurance companies.
The UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the scam involved the group receiving thousands of pounds in personal injury and vehicle damage compensation.
"Kuldip Singh was a serving police officer when he chose to involve himself in a corrupt scam that saw fraudulent insurance claims made after pre-arranged crashes," said Busola Johnson, specialist prosecutor with the CPS Special Crime Division.
"On top of that, he made fraudulent and false claims about vehicles from his own car hire company. This was not a momentary lapse of judgement but a sustained pattern of calculated dishonesty, carried out for financial gain and designed to deceive insurers, employers and the justice system itself.
"The public are entitled to expect the highest standards from those entrusted with enforcing the law, and Kuldip Singh's actions represented a serious betrayal of that trust and caused significant financial harm," she said.
Singh pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, fraud by false representation, two counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, two counts of perverting the course of justice and unauthorised access to a computer to facilitate the commission of further offences at Southwark Crown Court in London on Tuesday (7). He will be sentenced at the same court on June 2.
The CPS released details of the scam, with one incident dating back to March 2016, when a member of the group, Raiyaan Anwar, 32, who worked as a Tesco supermarket delivery driver at the time, drove his delivery van into the back of a white Citroen being driven by Singh.
Singh's passengers were four other men who were all involved in the scam. Anwar admitted liability for the crash to his then employer, Tesco, but did not inform them that he knew the driver and passengers of the other car.
This led to five personal injury compensation claims totalling £33,362, although only £912 was paid.
Singh also ran a car hire company called ADK Supreme with another man, Alper Emin, 55, where high-value vehicles were obtained on finance and rented out to people who could not otherwise afford such vehicles.
A client of ADK Supreme crashed one of the rented Mercedes cars and, to avoid liability, Singh and Emin falsely alleged that a burglary had taken place at the company address and that the key to the crashed Mercedes had been stolen. There had been no such burglary, the court was told.
Singh subsequently made a false insurance claim to cover the damage and received £16,145 from the insurance company.
According to the CPS, three further cars leased by ADK Supreme were involved in collisions or issued with tickets for road traffic violations, and Singh falsely claimed that the cars had been cloned (fitted with stolen number plates to disguise identity) to avoid liability.
He also created a false police report stating that one of his leased cars had been cloned and persuaded a member of police staff to enter this on the police database in an attempt to avoid suspicion.
Singh was dismissed without notice from the Metropolitan Police on November 23, 2017, for gross misconduct. He and the other men then fled the country. Singh was extradited from Georgia last month.
His co-suspects, Anwar, Emin, Krishna Gnanaseelan, 31, and Singh Dehal, 31, have been prosecuted in their absence and remain at large.
(PTI)
