A BUDDING actor has been convicted of allowing his student bank account to be used for the laundering of money stolen from an elderly Cumbrian flood victim.
Carlisle Crown Court heard earlier this week how the female victim, now aged 83, was duped out of around £64,500 by two fraudsters who contacted her Kendal home landline in October, 2016. They tricked her into thinking her account was compromised, and persuaded her to transfer cash into what she was led to believe were safe temporary dummy accounts.
However, the money was instead quickly and fraudulently filtered down into the bank accounts of so-called “money mules”. Detectives hit a series of dead ends as they attempted to follow the stolen loot further, and only around £20,000 was recovered and returned to the victim.
One of these money mules, 20-year-old Nikhil Yauvan Reedye, went on trial at Carlisle Crown Court. He denied converting criminal cash into foreign currency – knowing or suspecting it to constitute a person’s benefit from criminal conduct – at a time when he was studying film, media and stage performing at Kingston University in his home city of London.
But this afternoon (WED), following a two-day trial, he was convicted of both offences by a jury on majority verdicts.
Reedye, of Kennedy Close, Mitcham, Merton, will now be sentenced at the crown court on September 6 along with two other men – both from the Greater Manchester area. They admitted money laundering offences at the court earlier this week.
Judge James Adkin told jurors today after they convicted Reeyde: “It seems to be a case that the money mules are all students or young people who appreciate £50 or so being placed into their accounts. If not for the mules, the people ringing up the elderly and vulnerable would not be able to get anywhere.”
Reedye was bailed, but told that all options – including custody – would be open at the sentencing hearing.
