A criminal gang as been jailed in the UK after being convicted of hijacking Vodafone accounts in order to make premium rate phone calls.
Four men were accused of acquiring customer account details and then persuading Vodafone customer care staff to link those accounts to SIM cards they had in their possession.
They then used the SIM cards to make calls to premium rate phone lines that they owned, with the bills going to the unsuspecting customers. They took a percentage of the revenue from the premium rate lines which were charging £2.50 per minute.
It's estimated that around 1,500 accounts were hijacked, costing Vodafone £1 million in losses.
One victim told the court that she thought she would have to sell her home to settle a £80,000 phone bill.
The gang -- made up of Kaleem Hussain, 30; Nadeem Ali, 26; Waseem Rashid, 26; and Imran Rasab, 35 -- was given a total of 11 years and five months in prison for conspiracy to defraud.
Passing sentence, judge Henry Blacksell QC said: "The billed losses to the respective customers amounted to some £2.8 million, but as anyone who understands the fraud knows, the losses suffered by the providers in this case amount to somewhere in excess of £1 million."
The judge said the men had behaved in an "outrageous" way and shown no remorse for their wrongdoing.
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