Elderly couple conned by callous fraudsters
AN ELDERLY couple spent their £91,000 life savings on luxury Rolex watches after being targeted by fraudsters posing as police officers.
Matthew Kufour-Mills, 19, appeared at Cardiff Crown Court on Friday via video link to be sentenced for his role as courier in a UK-wide scam which saw conmen contact elderly people pretending to the police and telling them their bank account had been hacked or interfered with.
An elderly couple from Newport, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were targeted twice by the vicious scheme and were told to withdraw sums of £51,000 and £40,000 respectively and buy expensive Rolex watches, which would then be collected by a courier. They were told this would help to protect their money.
On one occasion, staff at Watches of Switzerland accompanied the couple to a bus stop after they had purchased the watches in order to make sure they weren’t mugged.
In his summation, Judge Jeremy Jenkins said the couple were contacted by telephone on February 28 from someone claiming to be a Detective Chief Inspector Martin, who told them their bank card had been used fraudulently in Birmingham.
The caller told them to withdraw £51,000 from their bank account and use the money to buy expensive watches. They proceeded to buy two watches, with staff accompanying them to the bus stop, and a courier came to collect the watches later that day.
The couple were contacted again at a later date in March from someone purporting to be DCI Martin and told to buy two Rolex watches worth £40,000 combined and give them to a courier. On this occasion the courier was Kufour-Mills, who was identified from CCTV footage.
The defendant was on bail at the time for committing a similar offence in Maidstone, Kent, where an elderly woman had also been contacted by someone pretending to be a police officer and told to buy watches to give to a courier.
The woman was suspicious and contacted the real police, who were there when KufourMills arrived to collect the watches. He later pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to obtain by deception.
Defending, Stephen Mould said his client, a father of two and a Deliveroo driver, was a drug user and had got into debt. In order to pay back the drug debts, he was used as a courier in these scams.
The barrister said Kufour-Mills had a “limited awareness” to the full extent of the scam and described him as “cannon fodder” and a “foot soldier” compared to the scam organisers.
Sentencing, Judge Jenkins said: “This appears to some an obvious scam but to elderly people, who are instinctively trusting of the police and what they say, it appeared to be genuine. Unless you had chosen elderly vulnerable victims, this would never have succeeded. That shows cynical pre-planning and execution.
“This was a conspiracy and, in my judgement, your role was as essential as the person who described himself as Detective Chief Inspector Martin.
“The victims, being elderly and vulnerable, have suffered greatly and I have read how they have been affected after losing £90,000 of hard-earned savings. The effect on them has been profound and long-lasting.”
Kufour-Mills, of Inwen Court, Grinstead Road, London, was sentenced to a total of 27 months’ detention in a young offender institution.
PC Alistair Frame, of Gwent Police, said: “We welcome the sentence imposed on KufourMills and encourage anyone who thinks they may be a victim of this type of fraud to contact police.”