London: An Indian-origin 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.
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 compensations.
“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.
He will be sentenced for the crimes 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, 32-year-old Raiyaan Anwar who worked as a Tesco supermarket delivery driver at the time.