A brazen fraudster and his accomplice conned a 90-year-old woman into buying £90,000 of watches - and then drove her to London's jewellery quarter to buy them gold.
Kishan Bhatt and Artiom Kiseliov cruelly persuaded their hapless victim she was helping police as they ferried her to jewellers in a bogus sting operation.
Bhatt, who was caught while staying at a Finsbury Park hotel, was jailed for eight years at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Tuesday for nine counts of fraud.
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The 28-year-old, of no fixed address, had pleaded guilty at the same court in November.
His accomplice Artiom Kiseliov, 35, of Glenwood Road, Harringay, had been jailed for four-and-a-half-years for one count of fraud having pleaded guilty on March 4, 2022 at the same court.
In early 2022, Bhatt had telephoned a 90-year-old Colchester woman, claiming to be a police officer and stating they had arrested a male with her bank card.
He told her to invest in gold and jewellery, callously telling her fraudsters would not be able to access it this way. He then passed the victim to the 'Serious Fraud Team' - in fact another fraudster.
She was instructed to buy expensive watches worth more than £90,000 over two-weeks, with Kiseliov going to her home to collect these. The con men told her they would keep them safe.
On January 25, 2022, Bhatt and Kiseliov drove her to Hatton Garden to get her to buy gold - telling her she was helping the police with an investigation.
The pair had told her the jewellers were corrupt and that police would value the gold she bought to confirm this.
The jewellers asked for ID and asked the woman to return another day whilst they completed identification checks and ordered the gold.
The next day a suspicious jeweller alerted police and detectives visited the victim at her home address.
The woman had made purchases at other jewellers, but fortunately these were still pending when police were contacted and were cancelled by the jewellers.
Detectives launched an investigation and identified the vehicle Bhatt and Kiseliov used to transport the victim to the jewellers.
They also obtained a phone number Bhatt was using under an alias.
The vehicle was located and inside detectives found a petrol station receipt that identified Kiseliov buying a coffee on the day in question.
Kiseliov was located and arrested. Forensic results on the vehicle later yielded a DNA sample for Bhatt, who was still ripping off victims.
Through extensive data work, officers tracked Bhatt down to a hotel in Finsbury Park, where he was arrested on May 22, 2022.
In his digital devices, officers discovered substantial evidence of fraud.
Between September 2020 and May 2022 Bhatt targeted nine victims aged between 29 and 90 - who were approached whilst he posed as a bank employee, a landlord and a police officer to transfer money out of their accounts.
In another crime Bhatt posed as a police officer and bank employee to steal £147,000 from an 87-year-old woman.
The majority of the money has been refunded by banks.
In total he stole more than £260,000 but many further attempts were blocked by financial institutions or jewellers.
Det Cons Sarah Cook, from the Metropolitan Police's economic crime division, said the emotional toll on victims had been "immense", and some could have been deprived of their life savings without the good will of banks.
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