Ten plead guilty to £320,000 ‘crash for cash’ fraud

An organised crime group that pocketed over £320,000 through a ‘crash for cash’ scheme have pleaded guilty to fraud charges.

Raju Patel and Kamlesh Vadukul were the ringleaders of the group, which submitted claims on insurance and to a vehicle repair finance service, for road traffic collisions that were deliberately induced or had never taken place.

The remaining eight members of the group either caused the collisions or knowingly provided their personal details to facilitate the claims.

Following an investigation led by the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED), two members of the group pleaded guilty at Birmingham Crown Court to the charges brought against them:

• Kamlesh Vadukul, 36, of Firshill Avenue, Sheffield, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and money laundering.
• Amarjit Dhaliwal, 45, of Millers Road, Warwick, also known as Amo Singh, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.

The remainder of the group pleaded not guilty and a four-week trial began at Birmingham Crown Court on 20 January 2025. They submitted guilty pleas during the first week of the trial as follows:

• Raju Patel, 40, of Segundo Road, Walsall, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and money laundering.
• Aqeb Hussain,42, of Gainsborough Avenue, Oldham, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.
• Dimple Ghera, 38, of Farndale Avenue, Wolverhampton, pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation.
• Minata Jalloh, 32, of Empress Way, Dudley, pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation.
• Saqib Khan, 32, of Vincent Street, Walstead, pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation.
• Asid Nadeem, 40, of Dudley Road, Dudley, pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation.
• James Payne, 37, of Carisbrooke Road, Sandwell, pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation.
• Amjad Rehman, 50, of Hope Street, Walsall, pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation.

Detective Sergeant Adam Maskell, from the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED), said:

“‘Crash for cash’ fraud puts motorists at risk and contributes to the rise in premiums for everyone who buys insurance. The sophisticated level of planning involved in this scheme shows the greed of calculated insurance criminals and the measures they will take to gain financially.

“This was a complex and lengthy investigation and the fact that the group have now admitted their guilt demonstrates the strength of the evidence against them. ‘Crash for cash’ fraud doesn’t go unnoticed by the insurance industry or law enforcement and we will work collaboratively to root out organised crime, as this case has shown.”

Patel and Vadukul purported to run a body repair shop for vehicles involved in road traffic collisions.

In December 2015, they formed an agreement with a repair finance service that provided credit to non-fault drivers whose vehicles were damaged in road traffic collisions. This would enable a non-fault driver to receive funds to repair their vehicle within 24 hours, rather than having to wait for an insurer to pay out. The company would then claim back the cost of the repair from the at-fault driver’s insurer.

Patel and Vadukul took out motor insurance policies using stolen identities or the personal details of the other members of the group. They submitted claims on insurance for vehicle damage for collisions that had either been deliberately induced by members of the group or had never taken place.

The pair would then send the repair finance service photos of the vehicles that were allegedly involved in the collisions as proof that they were being repaired. The repair finance service did not physically inspect the vehicles to confirm that the damage was genuine.

Multiple insurers raised concerns around the validity of the claims, as many of the insurance policies were taken out shortly before the collisions were said to have occurred, or the insured vehicle was not registered to the policyholder.

The case was referred to IFED by the Insurance Fraud Bureau. Officers from IFED investigated eight repair finance claims submitted by the body repair shop and found that it had not undertaken repairs for any of them.

The investigation revealed that Patel and Vadukul had submitted repair finance claims, worth a total of £275,548, for 39 collisions from December 2015 to October 2016. The repair finance service made the payments into a bank account that had been opened by Vadukul.

A total of £321,055 was paid into the bank account from December 2015 to October 2016 and was withdrawn as cash or transferred into other accounts linked to Patel.

The group will be sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court on 28 and 29 April 2025.