Yahoo Finance Crash-for-crash boxer ‘Kevin Heartbreak’ jailed for scam with reality TV star
A boxer calling himself Kevin Heartbreak who splashed out of a lavish lifestyle with the profits of a ‘cash-for-crash’ fraud has been jailed for four years.
Hamid Sediqi, 36, orchestrated the fraud involving his girlfriend Belma Draganovic and reality TV star Mason Smith, inventing a series of car crashes to make bogus insurance claims.
The trio took it in turns to pretend to have been involved in road accidents, using pictures from the internet of damaged vehicles to bolster the claims.
Sediqi also cloned the identity of an insurance claims management company in order to pass on cases to solicitors and rake in referral fees.
The boxer, who used aliases including Kevin Heartbreak, Richard Joseph Johnson and Najib Sharifi, had been jailed in 2013 for a similar scam, using scrapped cars to make bogus payout bids.
At Inner London crown court today he was sentenced to four years in prison, while Draganovic, 32, was handed an 11-month suspended prison sentence.
Smith, a professional boxer and contestant on dating reality TV show Singletown, was handed a community order including a three-month tagged curfew.
The court heard Sediqi and Draganovic had enjoyed a luxury lifestyle, buying a penthouse apartment in Gran Canaria and splashing out on a series of ostentatious vehicles including a bright pink Mazda RX7.
City of London Police investigators also discovered pictures on Sediqi’s phone of his pet dog covered in banknotes, as well as shots of designer goods.
“Sediqi was investigated in 2013 and received jail time for contriving road traffic collisions”, said Detective Constable Haywood, from the force’s Insurance Fraud Enforcement Department.
“In spite of this custodial sentence, Sediqi clearly had not learned his lesson, and has yet again attempted to gain financially from a number of fraudulent activities.
“With accomplices in tow, Sediqi managed to fraudulently accrue nearly £245,000, targeting solicitors and insurance companies, and stealing the identities of companies and members of the public. The trio of criminals became tangled in a web of lies, which ultimately led to their downfall and the truth being exposed.”
The scam had begun in 2014 when Sediqi cloned the details of a claims management firm to set up a working relationship with a solicitor’s firm.
He received a £500 fee for each traffic crash claim he referred, and £700 for all other personal injury claims.
In January 2016 the real company’s director discovered what was happening, sparking an investigation that led back to Sediqi’s bank accounts.
He was caught hiding under a desk at his shop in Hanwell, west London, during a raid by police. Evidence showed that Sediqi and his accomplices had submitted fake insurance claims worth £200,000.
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