Indian-origin ex-Met officer pleads guilty in UK’s ‘crash-for-cash’ scam

Kuldip Singh, a 42-year-old former Metropolitan Police officer of Indian origin, has pleaded guilty to multiple charges in connection with a “crash-for-cash” insurance scam in the UK. Singh and his associates staged vehicle collisions, filed fraudulent injury and damage claims, and manipulated police records to cover up their crimes.

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.

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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, drove his delivery van into the back of a white Citroen being driven by Singh.

Singh’s passengers were four other men who were all involved in the scam. Anwar admitted liability for the crash to his then employer, Tesco, but did not inform them of his acquaintance with the driver and passengers of the car.

This led to five personal injury compensation claims and those fraudulent claims came to a total of 33,362 pounds, although only 912 pounds was paid.

Singh also ran a car hire company called ADK Supreme with another man, 55-year-old Alper Emin, where high-value vehicles were obtained on finance and rented out for a fee to individuals who would probably have been unable to pay for the vehicles themselves.

A client of ADK Supreme crashed one of the rented Mercedes cars and to avoid liability, Singh and Emin falsely alleged that a burglary had taken place at the company address and that the key to the crashed Mercedes had been stolen. There had been no such burglary, the court was told.

Singh subsequently made a false insurance claim to cover the damage to the crashed car and received 16,145 pounds from the insurance company.

According to the CPS, three further cars leased by ADK Supreme were involved in collisions or issued with tickets for road traffic violations, and Singh falsely claimed that the cars had been cloned to avoid being held liable.

He also created a false police report that one of his leased cars had been cloned and persuaded a member of police staff to make the entry on the police database in an attempt to avoid suspicion.

Singh was dismissed without notice from the Metropolitan Police Service on November 23, 2017, for gross misconduct. He and the other men then fled the country, but Singh was extradited from Georgia last month.

Meanwhile, his co-suspects – Anwar, Emin, Krishna Gnanaseelan, 31, and Singh Dehal, 31 – have been prosecuted in their absence and remain at large.