Refugee jailed after frauds worth £28k

Toure Moussa of Durham Road, Rowley Regis, had denied three charges of converting criminal property, but was found guilty following a trial.

Adam Western, prosecuting, said a company called Ezbob is an online lender which specialises in providing loans to small businesses.

Using the identities of two people, loans were obtained for £6,300 and £5,700 – with the money being paid into a nominated account, which was in fact Moussa's bank account.

"The fraud was quite sophisticated in nature, supported by copies of passports and energy bills," commented Mr Western.

Ezbob only suspected something was wrong when no repayments were made on the two loans, so contacted the police who were able to trace the account to 32-year-old Moussa.

The other victim was a customer of on-line estate agents Chesterton's, who received an e-mailed invoice from the company requesting a payment of £16,309.

But that was followed up by a second e-mail, purporting to be from the company, requesting that the payment be made into a different account.

When Chesterton's chased up the payment and were told it had been paid into that other account, they contacted the police who again traced the account to Moussa.

When he was arrested Moussa denied having any involvement in the frauds, claiming he had simply allowed another man to use his bank account, not realising any dishonesty was involved.

Colin McCarraher, defending, said: "This is a 32-year-old man, the father of two children, aged seven and five, who both reside in Guinea Bissau where they are being looked after by his partner.

"He does his best to send money back to them from his £250 a week income from his job sorting parcels."

Mr McCarraher said Moussa, who had been living under a dictatorship in his home country of Guinea, where he was a political activist, fled to this country in 2006, and it had taken him four years to be granted asylum.

At a time when opponents of dictator Lansana Conté were losing their lives, and he had been tortured, soldiers turned up at his home looking for him and shooting at him as he fled, after which he had made his way to Sierra Leone and then to the UK.

But in relation to a pre-sentence report, Mr McCarraher added: "It says he's unsuitable for supervision because it's his first offence, and I'm considerably hampered by his refusal to accept the jury's verdict."

Jailing Moussa at Coventry Crown Court, Judge Philip Gregory told him: "You played an active and extremely important role in a sophisticated fraud that went on for a number of months.

"As a consequence, a bank was cheated out of £12,000 which passed through your account, from which it was immediately withdrawn. They were sophisticated offences involving identity frauds.

"More seriously, a perfectly innocent individual was defrauded out of over £16,000 – a loss which has caused him great distress.

"This is serious fraudulent offending. I bear in mind you are a man of previous good character and that you have worked since coming to this country.

"For those reasons I reduce the starting point to a period of two years, but you have shown not one drop of remorse for the fraud with which you were involved."