Back in 2011, bus inspector Asan Akram was behind a \u00a3400000 scam, involving a\u00a0number 42 bus crashing into a Mercedes on Wimslow Road, the busiest bus route in Manchester.<\/p>\n
There were more than 30\u00a0passengers on board the double decker bus at the time of the incident. Insurers had therefore put aside \u00a3400000, expecting a flood of accident injury claims.<\/p>\n
Akram was one of the first at the scene of the crash; interviewing the driver, taking down names and asking if anyone needed medical assistance.<\/p>\n
An investigation later revealed, however, that Akram, Finglands bus company\u2019s night duty inspector, had staged the collision between the bus and the Mercedes, which had been driven by his friend Tariq Iqbal.<\/p>\n
In a statement to the\u00a0Manchester Evening News, <\/em>Phil Dobson, prosecuting, said: \u201cCCTV from the bus showed the Mercedes in close proximity to the bus\u2014stopping, slowing, allowing it to overtake\u2014several times before the moment of hard braking and collision.”<\/p>\n After both men admitted conspiracy to commit fraud at Manchester Crown Court, Akram has now been jailed for 16 months. Iqbal was given a 12-month sentence suspended for two years, 250 hours of unpaid work, and a four-month curfew. \u00a0The bus driver was investigated before being cleared.<\/p>\n Insurance companies became suspicious of the \u2018accident\u2019 due to the vagueness of Akram\u2019s report filled out after the incident, and employed a private investigation company.<\/p>\n The City of London Police was given the case by the insurers. They were unable to trace Akram until December 2013. By this time Iqbal had successfully gained a payout of \u00a312500 and Finglands had paid \u00a342000 in legal fees.<\/p>\n As quoted in Manchester Evening News<\/em>, Max Saffman, defending Akram, said he had shown himself capable of living a law-abiding life, but turned to fraud because of \u2018financial desperation\u2019.<\/p>\n City of London Police detective constable Mark Reynolds, who led the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department\u2019s (IFED) investigation, said: \u201cThis was a long-running and complex investigation which has ultimately proved that Akram and Iqbal meticulously planned to commit insurance fraud on a massive scale.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that their attempted scam put lives at risk by causing a crash with a packed double-decker bus on a busy road at night was inconsequential to them.<\/p>\n “They wanted half a million pounds from an insurer and were prepared to go to any length to get it.<\/p>\n \u201cBut what both men did not reckon on was IFED and the insurance industry working together to identify and track down criminals and have them brought to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A bus inspector from Longsight is jailed over a \u2018crash for cash\u2019 scam which saw a number 42 bus in Rusholme smash into his friend’s Mercedes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1446,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9922,9923,2305,9924,9925],"coauthors":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13206"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1446"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13206"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancunion.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}