East London forklift driver jailed for £175k spending spree using top footballer’s card

A forklift driver from East London has been jailed for fraud after spending £175k using Manchester City star Riyad Mahrez’s financial institution card.

Sharif Mohamed, 32, admitted to spending a number of the cash on Nando’s, Greggs, garments for his youngsters, in addition to drinks in high-end Ibiza bars however defined that he was ‘the autumn man’ for a wider group of people that used the card.

Mohamed was sentenced at London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court to a few years and eight months in jail, after Judge Laurence West-Knights QC stated that ‘staggering sums’ of cash have been stolen from Mahrez.

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The court docket additionally heard that Mahrez’s card was used at casinos, resort stays, and at a nail salon too.

The gang made ‘a whole bunch of transactions’ in the course of the month that they’d possession of the card, earlier than Mahrez observed the massive quantities of cash drained from his account.

Barclays Bank was compelled to reimburse Mahrez £175,830.

Manchester City’s Riyad Mahrez

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) confirmed that Mahrez, at the moment a winger for Manchester City however beforehand enjoying for Leicester City, was the sufferer of the rip-off.

Mohamed, of Forest Gate, East London, had earlier convictions for fraud, together with a 22-month suspended sentence in 2016 and an 18-month suspended sentence for financial institution card fraud simply two months earlier than Mahrez’s card was stolen.

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Judge West-Knights stated: “Only two months later you have been concerned in committing these offences with the identical man, and presumably with the identical others, we don’t know.

“The essence of this fraud was that it seems to have one perpetrated on a person with an excessive amount of cash, someone who actually wouldn’t spot these huge sums disappearing from the account no less than not immediately.”

Mohamed advised the court docket two of the names of his alleged accomplices, in addition to the nicknames of two others, however the choose believes that Mohamed is aware of greater than he’s saying.

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The choose stated: “There is far about what you say which is wholly unreliable.”

The card stolen from Mahrez was used to make purchases on a Jet2 flight, in addition to at quite a few venues in Ibiza.

Police tracked using the card and cross-referenced it with CCTV at cashpoints in Stratford and Leicester Haymarket buying centre, with proof supplied of Mohamed withdrawing cash using the card round 10 instances.

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