A Midlands duo who conned unsuspecting victims out of more than £100,000 after fraudulently purchasing luxury items have been jailed. Ghazanfar Khan and Kulwarn Chagger deployed a simple trick from the Hollywood film Catch Me If You Can.

Between June 2020 and February 2021, Khan targeted sellers of expensive items, including luxury watches, laptops and phones, on Facebook Marketplace and Gumtree. He contacted the victims using a fake name and arranged to meet them to collect the goods.

Accomplice Chagger initially claimed he would pay via bank transfer but instead used fake cheques, which later bounced. More than a dozen people were defrauded of just over £100,000.

Police connected 13 victims by identifying two fake cheques, phone numbers and repeated aliases used in the meet-ups acro

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