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Boris bike scammers jailed for £42,000 fraud

Pair paid bogus refunds to friends from TfL call centre

Two Boris bike workers who made bogus refund payments to friends totalling £42,000 have been jailed.

Nana Boateng and Jose Dias, both 26, worked in the cycle hire customer contact centre, where they authorised false refunds to seven friends. They made a guilty plea in March at Southwark Crown Court.

The refund payments are typically made to customers who are charged wrongly for their bike use; from a £1 charge when there is no paper in the machine to print a bike release code on, to a £300 charge for failing to dock a bike properly on its return.

Working in the north London contact centre, Dias paid out over £24,000 to friends over a two-day period, the Independent reported.

The scam began when the pair realised that TfL was not enforcing the rule that cash refunds had to be authorised by a manager, and began issuing them themselves, between September and December 2010.

Boateng was jailed for nine months, including one month for breaching an order for a separate offence, and Dias was sentenced to six months in jail.

Boateng’s barrister, Alexander Williams, called the crime ‘opportunistic’ and said that his client had only received around £8,000, of which he sent half to a sick aunt in Ghana.

Judge Alistair McCreath also handed out suspended prison sentences and community orders to the seven friends, who were convicted of money laundering offences.

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42 comments

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axisofweasel | 11 years ago
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Let his epitath read: "Personally Abusive!"

No you haven't been offensive (sorry but personally abusive is grating now) to anyone here. The point is the original remark was racist. Unless of course you could enlighten us to the real meaning.

Whats worse than your racism is the fact that you don't even have the courage to stand up for your convictions. Instead you cry "personally abusive!" as a shield for your racist bile.

Spineless, pathetic and despicable you make me ashamed to call myself Scottish. Unless of course you were seeking asylum in Cumbernauld perhaps?

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ColT replied to dreamlx10 | 11 years ago
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dreamlx10 wrote:

Nana Boateng, Jose Dias, say no more.

Based on the comments this has generated, perhaps you should say some more. What exactly does this mean? Just to clarify, like.  7

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Rvizzle | 11 years ago
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Can you please set up a separate thread, preferably on a separate forum for all the above?

I came one here to read something about Boris Bikes and fraud, although the "fraud" appears to be in the misleading article post......

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OldRidgeback replied to dreamlx10 | 11 years ago
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dreamlx10 wrote:

"your stupidity" Again personally abusive.

There's no abuse in my comment. I'd just like you to explain what you said in your first post and justify your reasons for making it. Once you've made this point clear, we can all move on.

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scotter | 11 years ago
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I love road.cc!  4  11  11

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dave atkinson | 11 years ago
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normally i reserve the pictures of kittens for helmet debates, but i'm prepared to make an exception here  39

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grumsk4 | 11 years ago
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That Cameron Diaz must be a real nasty piece of work, if names are anything to go by.  7

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OldRidgeback replied to ColT | 11 years ago
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ColT wrote:
dreamlx10 wrote:

Nana Boateng, Jose Dias, say no more.

Based on the comments this has generated, perhaps you should say some more. What exactly does this mean? Just to clarify, like.  7

"A nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat eh? Say no more eh, eh?"

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Bikeylikey | 11 years ago
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The nationality of the perpetrators, and their 'race' has obscured everything else here (there is an argument that the term 'race' is 'racist' in itself, i.e. that there's no scientific justification for the idea of 'race'). Whatever their origins, they have committed a shameful crime - what about some comments on that?

The Boris Bikes were a fantastic idea, but Transport London has got the pricing horribly wrong in my humble opinion. Too expensive to use for more than an hour, and far too expensive if you make a mistake, like going over your alloted time, or miss the docking - £300??? Absurd. All the bother you have to get the money back, if you ever do getit back. The risk of something going wrong puts a lot of people off. Still in essence an excellent public service idea. Ripping them off is nasty.

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Lacticlegs replied to OldRidgeback | 11 years ago
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I think everyone should calm down and leave Dreamix10 alone!

I mean come on! Everyone knows that immigrants with dodgy sounding names were stealing before they could crawl, eh Dreamix10? It's not even their fault - it's their genetic inferiority that leads 'em to it...nothing racist about pointing that out in a friendly (and anonymous) way. The anonymous bit is what I really admire - way to show some backbone dreamix10  3

My kinda guy - let me know where I can sign up for your neo-nazi nerds club. You prat.

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Jimbo33 | 11 years ago
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Do not feed the Troll.

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Daclu Trelub replied to dreamlx10 | 11 years ago
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dreamlx10 wrote:

Nana Boateng, Jose Dias, say no more.

Why, without further explanation from you, I'm forced to regard you as a knob.

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