A gang that deliberately crashed a 12-tonne bus carrying 26 passengers as part of a thousand-pound 'crash-for-cash' scam has been jailed.
Mohammed Omar Gulzar, 31, devised at least 39 collisions across South Yorkshire to claim up to £500,000 from insurance companies.
Working with a team of actors and fraudulent company City Claims 4 U, Gulzar filed dozens of claims for injuries such as whiplash for hundreds of pounds at a time.
The most elaborate stunt over the seven months between January and July 2011 involved Gulzar and his employee Shoaib Nawaz, 25, filling a single-decker First Mainline bus with co-conspirators, before driver Adam Herbert - who was in on the plot - deliberately crashed into a Vauxhall Safira.
Genuine passengers were bemused as people threw themselves to the floor, and one man ran into the windscreen, after the low-speed crash, Sheffield Crown Court heard.
Afterwards, 25 people made claims for whiplash.
Sentencing the gang at Sheffield Crown Court yesterday, Judge Graham Robinson said: 'The idea that cash-for-crash is a victimless crime needs to be rebuffed immediately.
He added: 'The fact that this criminal enterprise was a failure does not make the offences less serious and the sentence I give will hopefully serve as a deterrent to anyone considering taking part in a cash for crash scam.
SOURCE-DAILYM
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