An Ilford fraudster whose family crime ring made more than £40,000 by staging car crashes to make phoney insurance claims has been spared jail.

Abbas Moobe, 21, from Buttsbury Road, Ilford, was sentenced to 30 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months and 170 hours of unpaid work after pleading guilty to making fraudulent insurance claims at an Inner London Crown Court on Friday, August 17.

His uncle Salah Mohammed, 35, of no fixed abode; and Mohammed’s nephews Rashid Ahmed, 27, from Ilkeston Court, Hackney; and Abdullahi Bana, 23, from Southwold Road, Clapton; also pleaded guilty for their involvement in the ring.

Mohammed had six months added to the nine-year prison sentence he is already serving for an unrelated crime while Ahmed, 27, was been jailed for 18 months.

Bana was sentenced 24 weeks in prison suspended for 18 months and 150 hours of unpaid work.

The ring were caught following an investigation by the City of London Police’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department (IFED). Officers discovered that the same bank card, belonging to Moobe, had been used to set up seve separate insurance policies with Service Insurance and Aviva, among other insurers, using different fake names and addresses.

The family then worked together to set up a fake crash involving the insured vehicle, with Bana, Mohammed and Ahmed posing as the third party in a separate vehicle.

They would then make a mix of personal injury claims and vehicle repair claims against the policy that Moobe had incepted.

In total, they made five claims against the fraudulent policies, worth £41,210.60.

In some of the claims, they were also provided with hire cars.

City of London Police’s Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt, who led the investigation for IFED, said: “These fraudsters tried to claim for thousands of pounds for a series of fake car crashes, but thanks to our investigation with support from the IFB, Service Insurance and Aviva, all they’ve ended up with is a criminal sentence.

“This investigation is a prime example of how the Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department’s joint work with the insurance industry can prove invaluable, when catching out insurance fraudsters.”