£17,000 credit card scam at curryhouse
TWO waiters in a village restaurant have admitted spending £17,000 on luxury goods using cust-omers' stolen credit card details.
Brothers Abdul Salam and Abdul Munim, waiters at the Spices restaurant within the Wheatsheaf pub in Langham, admitted taking customers' credit card details and using them to buy mobile phones, plasma TVs and computers.
They were caught after it emerged a number of customers who used the restaurant, which has now closed, had been defrauded.
The brothers, of Queens Road, Loughborough, were each sentenced to a 12-month jail term, suspended for two years, and made the subject of a supervision requirement for two years, at Leicester Crown Court.
However, the sentence has been slammed by the landlord and landlady at the Wheatsheaf, Peter Ward and Julie Fraser. In a statement after the sentencing, they said: said: "Although they didn't physically hurt anybody, they still committed a serious crime and we are totally disgusted with the sentence."
The court heard that Salam, 22, and Munim, 29, were waiters at Spices after their family set up the restaurant. They would often end their shifts by painstakingly writing down customers' credit-card details.
Edward Barr, prosecuting, said: "When a customer purchased drinks or food they would be given the usual sales slip. Another slip was kept in a receptacle next to the bar.
"It soon became apparent that a number of customers who used the restaurant and made payment by credit card had been defrauded."
Police raided the restaurant in March last year and arrested the brothers, whose home was also searched.
Officers discovered a stockpile of expensive electrical goods – as well as the hand-written details of more than 30 credit cards.
The pair eventually admitted conspiracy to defraud companies, banks and institutions between November 2004 and February last year.
Judge Christopher Plunkett also ordered that a number of items seized by the police be confiscated.
They included a BMW 3-series, plasma TVs, five computers and more than 30 mobile phones.
He told the brothers: "If this scheme had been entirely successful you would have defrauded banks and accounts of some 35,000."
Ali Azhar, in mitigation, said Salam had been drinking heavily at the time but added: "He has now abandoned alcohol fully and completely.
"He is an intelligent person, and if he is given a chance he can go on and apply his intelligence to achieve something in life."
Jonathan Mole, defending Munim, said he suffered from schizophrenia and a jail sentence would do nothing for his state of mind.
The brothers are due back in court for a Proceeds of Crime hearing later this year, when a judge will rule how much money they should repay.
Langham resident Janet Callison, who was cheated out of 1,500, said: "I'm thrilled these people have been caught and brought to justice."
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