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Three sons of jailed hook-handed cleric Abu Hamza exploited a loophole in the vehicle registration system to carry out a “sophisticated” £1 million luxury car scam, a court heard today.
They and others targeted expensive makes including Mercedes, BMW and Range Rover in long-stay car parks.
Pretending the vehicles were theirs, they tricked the DVLA into transferring ownership to an alias and sending new log books to front addresses.
Keys were then obtained from dealers and the cars stolen, London's Southwark Crown Court heard.
The final stage involved selling them to unsuspecting buyers or using them as collateral to take out loans which they never repaid.
Hamza's sons, Hamza Kamel, 22, and Mohamed Mostafa, 27, helped run the two-year fraud with the cleric's stepson Mohssin Ghailam, 28.
Kamel and Mostafa, of Acton, West London, variously admitted fraud, handling stolen goods and money laundering between January 2007 and November last year, while Ghailam, of Shepherd's Bush, London, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud.
Four other London men have also admitted their involvement.
At a sentencing hearing today, Martyn Bowyer, prosecuting, said: “This was a sophisticated, well-planned and professionally executed enterprise”.
The court heard the men were arrested on November 5, 2008, following a Met Police investigation in to the organised theft and resale of luxury cars in London.
Mr Bowyer said officers identified 32 vehicles which were either stolen, targeted for theft or used as collateral to fraudulently obtain loans.
A number had been taken abroad and sold.
Mr Bowyer said: “The value of those 32 vehicles as they would have been if sold as new would have exceeded £1million.”
He told the court the gang would pick out cars left in long stay car parks and apply to the DVLA to change the address.
If the DVLA did not receive a reply from the original address within 14 days a new log book would be sent out.
Knowing the legitimate owners were away, the defendants would then inform the DVLA the name of the registered keeper had also changed, enabling them to obtain keys for the vehicle.
“This was the defendants seeking to exploit a loophole in the system at the DVLA,” Mr Bowyer said.
The court heard the defendants played different roles within the enterprise.
Kamel, of Saxon Drive, admitted five counts of handling stolen goods and of laundering more than £14,000 of criminal money in relation to the scam.
He was convicted in 2003 of possession of a weapon as well as a driving offence in 2008.
Mostafa, also of Saxon Drive, pleaded guilty to two counts of fraud by using false ID to secure a £12,000 loan and to obtain keys for a BMW.
He has a number of previous convictions including assaulting a police officer and a public order offence for which he was sentenced to eight weeks in prison, Mr Bowyer said.
Ghailan, of Holland Road, who admitted conspiracy to defraud, has no previous convictions, the court heard.
The other men facing sentence are Mohammed Chiadmi, 31, who was labelled a “key organiser” by the prosecution, his brother Abdul Chiadmi, 22, who was said to have played an “important role”, Khalid Jebari, 22, who was the operation's driver, and Hamza Mrimou, 27.
Mrimou, of Brompton Park Crescent, Fulham, has a string of previous convictions over the last decade including ABH for which he was sentenced to 18 months in prison in 2005 and disqualified from working with children.
Hamza, 50, who preached at a London mosque, was jailed for seven years in 2004 for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred.
He now faces extradition to the US for allegedly setting up an al Qaida training camp.
Last year another of his seven sons, Yasser Mostafa Kamel, 18, narrowly escaped jail after admitting burglary.
