Ex-Met officer admits role in car insurance scam

An ex-Metropolitan Police officer has admitted his role in a "crash for cash" scam in order to receive thousands of pounds in personal injury and vehicle damage payouts.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Kuldip Singh, 42, had been a serving officer at the time of the offences. He fled the country after being dismissed without notice from the Met in November 2017 and was extradited from Georgia on 4 March.

Busola Johnson, a prosecutor with the CPS, said Singh showed a "sustained pattern of calculated dishonesty, carried out for financial gain and designed to deceive insurers, employers and the justice system itself".

Sentencing will take place at Southwark Crown Court on 2 June.

In one incident on 11 March 2016, another member of the fraud group, Raiyaan Anwar, deliberately drove a Tesco delivery van into the back of a white Citroën driven by Singh.

Anwar, 32, admitted liability for the crash to his employer.

Singh and four passengers in his car made a total of five fraudulent personal injury compensation claims totalling £33,362 - although only £912 was ultimately paid out.

Singh also ran a car hire company, ADK Supreme, with another man, Alper Emin, 55.

The pair obtained high-value vehicles on finance and rented them to individuals who would have been unlikely to be able to afford the vehicles themselves, according to the CPS.

After one client of ADK Supreme crashed a rented Mercedes, Singh and Emin lied to avoid liability, falsely claiming a burglary had taken place at the company's address and that the key to the crashed vehicle had been stolen.

Singh received £16,145 from an insurance company following the false claim to cover the damage.

CPS said that Singh had claimed three other leased cars, which were either involved in crashes or issued with road traffic violation tickets, had been cloned in an attempt to avoid being held responsible.

Singh also created a fake police report about the cloning of one of his leased cars and persuaded a member of police staff to make the entry.

Singh, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud, fraud by false representation, two counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, two counts of perverting the course of justice and unauthorised access to a computer to facilitate the commission of further offences.

Anwar, Emin, Krishna Gnanaseelan, and Singh Dehal were also prosecuted and their cases concluded.

Update 29 May: This article originally reported that Singh's co-defendants fled the country and were tried in their absence.

This was based on information from the CPS, which has since confirmed that they remained in the country and were convicted after trial. We have amended the story to make this clear.

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