Holme Wood man jailed for defrauding Birmingham Midshires Building Society

Shamsher Khan, 39, invested £100,000 in an overseas account in Dubai and bought luxury goods, including an Audi Cabriolet, with the proceeds of his dishonesty, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Khan, of Holme Lane, Holme Wood, Bradford, told Birmingham Midshires building society that he earned up to £122,000 a year in an IT business to borrow sums of almost £200,000 and £160,000.

He was convicted by a jury in August of two charges of mortgage fraud and six charges of money laundering.

Sentencing him yesterday to 18 months in jail, the judge, Recorder Carl Gumsley, said he was “extremely shocked at the reckless attitude of the banks” after hearing evidence at the trial.

“The system for obtaining loans is shockingly lax,” he said.

And jailing Khan he told him: “You fancied living a flash lifestyle. This was a pre-planned fraud, dishonest from the outset.”

During his trial, Khan had blamed a dishonest broker for the fraud but it was heard he had lied to borrow the money and income tax records showed no evidence that he earned a wage.

The jury was told that hundreds of thousands of pounds of stolen money was transferred to accounts based in Spain.

It was alleged that some of this stolen money was sent back to the UK to fund Khan’s purchase of Holme Farm Barn in 2004.

Khan then raised two mortgages against it, generating more than £350,000 in cash, of which £100,000 was used in a further property purchase and £100,000 of which was sent to an account in the name of Ajvinder Singh in Dubai.

After the case, a police spokesman said Khan’s conviction followed a money-laundering investigation carried out by the North East Regional Asset Recovery Team.

Detective Chief Inspector Lisa Atkinson said: “It is clear that Shamsher Khan closely associated with a Bradford-based organised crime group that spanned the length of this country and overseas, whose members were used to launder large sums of money stolen from innocent members of the public”.