Chop shop gang jailed after stripping down cars stolen from across West Midlands
Four members of a chop shop gang who stripped parts from cars stolen from across the West Midlands have been jailed for a combined 23 years.
Mohammed Nadeem, Nadeem Arshad, Zahir Hussain and Amaan Zameer ran chop shops in Birmingham linked to more than 100 stolen vehicles valued at well over £1 million.
The gang bought damaged vehicles from salvage auctions rated repairable write-offs and fixed them using parts stripped from cars stolen during burglaries and violent car-jackings.
The patched-up cars were then sold to unsuspecting buyers online and put back on the roads without any mechanical or safety checks.
WATCH: Police bust Birmingham chop shop
Bodycam footage released by police shows how two of the gang tried to run away after a man who'd had his BMW M3 stolen led officers to one of the chop shops.
Nadeem, 28, Arshad, 42, Hussain, 31, and Zameer, 30, have now been sentenced to jail terms of between four-and-a-half years and seven years each, while 34-year-old Lisa Spence has been given a suspended sentence after playing a minor role in the scam.
117 stolen cars
Detectives linked the group to 117 stolen cars mainly taken from the West Midlands, but also from Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire and Yorkshire, but it is believed the group harvested parts and body panels from hundreds more stolen vehicles.
The extent of the racket was exposed after a £70,000 Mercedes SL400 stolen from Aylesbury Road, Solihull, in 2017 was traced to a garage in Digbeth’s Charles Henry Street.
The car − taken by thieves who pounced when the driver got out to knock on a friend’s door − was found inside on false plates and surrounded by a stash of car parts, body panels and number plates from 21 stolen cars.
The raid led officers to another chop shop in nearby Cheapside where 24 stolen cars had been dismantled and to the homes of Nadeem, in Glovers Road, and Arshad, in Eastlands Road, where more car parts and vehicle documents were seized.
Stolen parts were sold by the men through two eBay accounts, BritishGermanCarSpares and car_parts_2010, which had shipping addresses linked to Nadeem and co-conspirator Arshad.
Officers found another chop shop in Grove Road, Sparkhill, after a BMW stolen from a garage forecourt in Derby was tracked to a business unit.
Police found one VW Golf, sold to a man for just over £10,000, had been re-fitted with airbags taken from a stolen car which would likely have failed to deploy in a crash.
Meanwhile 30 shipping containers out of 250 searched at a storage facility in Curzon Street were found to contain parts cut from stolen cars, with one rented by Arshad hiding eight engines and gearboxes.
Nadeem, of Finch Road, Lozells, admitted conspiring to handle stolen vehicles and was jailed for six years
Hussain, of Finch Road, Lozells, admitted conspiring to handle stolen vehicles and was jailed for four-and-a-half years
Zameer, of Gladstone Road, Sparkbrook, admitted conspiring to handle stolen vehicles and was jailed for five years and three months. He was also given an extra three months for assault with intent to resist arrest.
Arshad, who initially denied involvement but entered a guilty plea on day one of his trial at Birmingham Crown Court, was jailed for seven years.
Spence admitted a count of possessing an article in the use of fraud after initially pleading not guilty and was given a nine-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to do 100 hours unpaid work.
Det Insp Hannah Whitehouse said: “This group was handling stolen cars on a huge scale... bigger than anything we’ve ever seen in the West Midlands. We believe hundreds of stolen vehicles have passed through their chop shops.
“It’s unclear who was stealing the cars for them but our belief is the gang was ordering stolen cars to match those they’d bought at salvage auctions.
“We know they bought around 300 salvage vehicles since 2015 from one major dealer alone − and we seized evidence showing they’d advertised 350 vehicles for sale on Gumtree and Autotrader with a combined value of £900,000.
“This group may not have been stealing cars but they were providing a very active market for car thieves and causing lots of pain and distress to motorists."
A Proceeds of Crime hearing in April will decide how much money the gang needs to repay.
