Infamous Birmingham fugitive Zahid Khan is finally behind bars following more than five years on the run - but readers could be forgiven for forgetting or not knowing what he was convicted of in the first place. Over the years the 38-year-old from Moseley has attracted many labels; victim, entrepreneur, businessman, millionaire, pilot, show-off and in more recent times, criminal.
Perhaps the most significant phrase to describe him is fraudster, as that is what he was convicted of in 2018 when he sensationally fled the country at the end of his trial as the jury went out to deliberate. Khan, who had sacked his lawyers, delivered his own 'erratic' closing speech but then went on to try and sway the jurors by posting unused text messages on his Facebook.
His attempt was unsuccessful and he was ultimately found guilty of multiple offences and sentenced to ten years in his absence - a punishment Khan is now belatedly serving. But what exactly was the case about?
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Essentially, it was a personalised number plate scam worth £500,000 which also involved Khan's brothers Aamir Khan and Ayan Ahmed as well as his cousin Zubair Ahmad. Scottish lottery winner Gillian Bayford, who had scooped a £148million jackpot in August 2012, was among those targeted.
The trial at Birmingham Crown Court heard Zahid Khan had masterminded the scam as he lived a 'playboy lifestyle'. Prosecutors said he had possibly married up to three women in Muslim ceremonies as well as had numerous affairs. He admitted lying on four separate car insurance policies - failing to disclose his criminal convictions, licence points and CCJ’s against him – in order to obtain cheaper cover.
More significantly, he tried to register five existing personalised number plates with the DVLA under his own name and those of his relatives in order to sell them on. One victim's 'C1' plate was worth an estimated £250,000 while Khan sold one with the characters '2K' for £85,000.
But it was Ms Bayford's '8G' that would be the downfall of the plot. Khan tried to shift it to a Black Country firm who contacted the lottery winner to see if she wanted to purchase it, only to be told it was already fitted to a car on her driveway.
The company reported it to the police and detectives began a painstaking investigation. They revealed that Khan, who also went by the name Adam Hussain, had pressured an Audi salesman into supplying confidential car buyer details, including home addresses and chassis numbers.
Even hand-writing experts and voice analysts were drafted in to establish Khan had forged forms and made calls to the DVLA. Investigators used his passport application to match up with the dodgy documents.
Khan would contact the DVLA purporting to be the rightful owner of the valuable plates, claiming he had lost the log book and needed to change his address. When he returned the logbook, featuring the genuine owner's name, he put himself or one of his co-conspirators down as the 'grantee' on V778 retention documents.
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Khan was also linked to six stolen cars which had been fitted with false plates. In December 2014 he was caught driving a VW Golf with cloned plates and then two months later he displayed VRMs on a Vauxhall van suggesting it was two years younger than its manufacture date.
In December 2015 his brother Aamir tried to sell two Audi A3s and a Range Rover Evoque on his behalf but they were refused by an auction house which reported their suspicions to the police. All three were on bogus plates. In May 2016 Aimar swapped a stolen Evoque at a car yard with an Audi A8 which Zahid sold the next day.
The pair tried covering their tracks by creating a series of text messages from themselves to a supposed rogue car dealer named 'Paul Plates'. And Zahid later tried framing an old school friend who he claimed had sold him the personalised plates.
Conveniently, he stated his contact details had been lost in a mystery arson attack to his Bulls and Horses car business in Sparkhill in 2016. At the time of that incident, reported by the Birmingham Mail, Khan blamed 'jealous haters' and offered to stump up a £40,000 reward for information on the perpetrators.
Khan ended up representing himself at the trial in 2018 after dismissing one barrister while another resigned over his antics.
After making his closing speech he fled the UK and then uploaded an astonishing 16-minute video to Facebook addressing judge Philip Parker. He said: "I am making this video to let you know I am very sorry, I did not want to do what I did, but I I felt like I had no other choice.
"Had I stayed in the UK, I was not having no justice and the only safest option I had was to leave this country."
He claimed others were behind the number plate scam and that he feared for his own life adding: "I had no choice not to attend court and flee the country."
Khan was ultimately found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud, perverting the course of justice and concealing and converting criminal property having admitted three counts of fraudulently obtaining car insurance and being convicted of a fourth. He was sentenced to ten years.
Aamir Khan, then aged 25 and from Moseley, was found guilty of conspiracy to defraud, perverting the course of justice, plus concealing and converting criminal property. He was sentenced to four years, six months.
Ayan Ahmed, then aged 39 and from Solihull, was convicted of conspiracy to defraud and sentenced to three years jail. Zubair Ahmad, then aged 32, from Tyseley, was sentenced to two years, eight months for conspiracy to defraud.
Fifth man Kaesar Ali, then aged 28 and also from Sparkhill, received six months for conspiracy to dishonestly make false representation although at the time he was serving a longer punishment for causing death by dangerous driving and money laundering.
It also emerged that Zahid Khan and Aamir Khan were involved in trying to smuggle Afghan nationals into the country in the back of a lorry in 2015. Both were convicted of conspiring/assisting in unlawful immigration into the UK and handed 30 months.
Speaking about the fraud case at the time Detective Constable Rob Piper, from West Midlands Police’s Economic Crime Unit, said: "Zahid Khan was the one skilled in this fraud. He had identified this fraud through his criminal brain and his heavy involvement in the criminal industry and then enlisted the help of his two brothers and cousin."
He added: "Zahid Khan portrayed the image of a legitimate businessman and a multi-millionaire…but in reality he is a career criminal and a con artist.
"He and his family and associates clearly thought they had identified a scheme that could make them significant sums of money: the five VRMs they had stolen the rights for had a combined value of half a million pounds. However, we uncovered the scam and he has rightly now been convicted for leading this criminal gang."
Zahid spent most of his years on the run holed up in Dubai where he continued to boast on Facebook about his luxury life meeting celebrities and flying planes. In 2021 he travelled to Turkey where he was arrested in November 2023 and deported back to the UK.
In April this year he appeared at Birmingham Crown Court via a video link from HMP Birmingham and admitted an offence of failure to surrender. He will receive his punishment for that later this month. Meanwhile he serves his existing prison sentences.
