Immigrant gang stole £250,000 in benefit cheques and splashed out on luxury gear


A gang of African immigrants stole £250,000 in benefit cheques and then splashed out on luxury designer clothes.

The Conglese gang of five, which had two postmen working on the inside, were jailed for a total of 11 years and now face deportation.

Birmingham Crown Court Recorder Justin Wigoder said the theft of more than 800 giro cheques from the post over four years had left hundreds of needy people without funds.

Postal worker Massamba Lubamba, who stole more than 500 of the cheques, was jailed for four years.

Forger Basimo Ngolo - doctored the cheques using a typewriter, scalpels, crayons, glue, correction fluid and typewriter ribbons - was jailed for three and a half years.

'Middlemen' Willy Mazele and Cyprien Noumeme-Simetcho, were each jailed for 21 months.


A fifth defendant, a Cameroonian woman, was not recommended for deportation.

Passing sentence, Recorder Wigoder said: "Thefts from the mail are serious - they do damage to public confidence and the Royal Mail.

"The conspiracy also had real victims - the poor and disadvantaged who rely on their fortnightly giros as their source of income.

"The conspiracy involved over 800 giros to a value of £250,000 and that's all real gain - real cash received by you and your colleagues."

The court was told that the gang, which included another postman, stole hundreds of cheques from postal sorting offices in Birmingham and Leeds.

The amounts on the cheques were then altered - usually to £300 - to match those on stolen bank and credit cards before they were cashed at post offices across the West Midlands.

Investigators from the Department for Work and Pension found thousands of pounds in cash had been paid into the bank accounts of the two postal workers, and that some of the money had been used to buy designer clothes and goods from Prada, Louis Vuitton and Harvey Nichols.

Commenting on the sentences handed down by the recorder, Anti-fraud Minister James Plaskitt said: "This was a well-organised and sophisticated attack on the benefits system by people intent on lining their pockets from the public purse.

"We will always seek to impose the strongest penalties for benefit cheats."

Lubamba, 35, of Baldmore Lake Road, Erdington, Birmingham; Ngolo, 40, of Trinity Court, Aston, Birmingham; Noumeme-Simetcho, 26, of no fixed abode, and Mazele, 35, of Uxbridge Street, Newtown, Birmingham, all admitted conspiracy to defraud at a previous hearing.

John Crimee, a 31-year-old French national of Scott Hall Avenue, Leeds, failed to appear in court and a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Crimee is thought to have stolen almost 350 giros while working as a postman in the Leeds area from February 2005.

Immigrant gang stole £250,000 in benefit cheques and splashed out on luxury gear | the Daily Mail

silly stuff


stealing is bad.......stealing to buy "fresh gear" is even worse....


dudes working for postal service aren't smart enough to know that it would be linked back to him?