Members of a ‘chop shop’ gang have been ordered to pay back more than £1-million after police linked them to 117 car thefts across the West Midlands and beyond.
Mohammed Nadeem, Nadeem Arshad, Amaan Zameer and Zahir Hussain were jailed in December 2019 for running one of the biggest chop shop rackets in the country.
They snapped up damaged vehicles from salvage auctions rated repairable write-offs and fixed them using parts stripped from stolen-to-order cars.
The stolen vehicles – taken during burglaries and violent carjackings – were dismantled at so-called chop shops in Birmingham before patched-up cars were sold on to unsuspecting buyers via online sales sites.
They were put back on the roads without any mechanical or safety checks.
The gang were collectively jailed for almost 23 years – but our investigation didn’t end there.
Officers from our Economic Crime Unit pawed through their financial dealings, bank statements and assessed the value of the stolen cars we could prove had passed through their chop shops.
And just before Christmas (23 Dec) Nadeem, Arshad and Zameer were ordered to pay back £1,100,000 following a Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) application at Wolverhampton Crown Court.
Arshad, aged 42, must also pay back £114,941 after we identified a series of bank account deposits he was unable to explain.
Nadeem (28) from Finch Road in Lozells and 30-year-old Zameer, from Gladstone Road in Sparkbrook, must also pay back £17,543 and £51,183 respectively in suspicious deposits.
The court will hear our POCA application against Zahir Hussain next month.
Detective Inspector Hannah Whitehouse, said: “This group was handling stolen cars on a huge scale… bigger than anything we’ve ever seen in the West Midlands.
“They were providing a very active market for car thieves, causing lots of pain and distress to motorists.
“These men are still in jail but it’s important we show crime doesn’t pay and will pursue offenders through the courts to strip them of their ill-gotten gains.
“We’ll take any cash and assets the men have to repay the POCA amount and any outstanding debt will hang over them for life. We will regularly re-visit their cases and seize any property or inheritance they should come into until the debt is paid off.”