An ingenious cashpoint crook who launched a £6,000-plus nighttime blitz on a building society’s machines after copycat crimes in Northern Ireland had an extra six months added to his jail term on Tuesday.
French-Algerian Abdel Karim Redjel, 30, of 25 Alveston Drive, Belfast, targeted the Coventry Building Society and fleeced cashpoints using his top-secret technique.
He pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to seventeen counts of Transactional Reversal Fraud on various dates between May 25 and June 2, 2007 totalling £6,300.
The court heard Redjel opened a string of bogus accounts, but employed a system whereby withdrawls were not debited.
Outside, Detective Constable Dave Job of the joint Metropolitan and City of London Police's Dedicated Cheque and Plastic Crime Unit said: “I don’t know how he does it.
“He puts a card in, adds the PIN, requests £500 and as the cash comes out of the drawer he physically interferes with the machine. If I knew how he did it I might not be doing this!”
Redjel, who is also wanted in Germany for similar crimes, was sentenced to 6 months imprisonment on each count to run concurrently with each other, but consecutively to four-and-a-half years he is serving in Lurgan Prison.
“I bear in mind this was a skillful and organized attack on the banks. You moved very fast and were fully aware of your dishonesty,” Judge James Wadsworth QC told Redjel.
Prosecutor Mr Martin Whitehouse told the court: “This was a transactional reversal fraud. The defendant would place his legitimate card in the machine and as the money came out manipulated the machine.
“The machine would send a message to the Coventry Building Society to recredit the account.”
Redjel moved swiftly around Coventry at night, hitting six cashpoints between 10.30 and 11.30pm with one card and then blitzing six more with another two cards from 3am the next day.
“It is extremely clever,” added Mr Whitehouse. “The cards are legitimate, but wether the process of obtaining them is legitimate, I doubt.
“He also tried to get away with a further £1,500,” added the prosecutor.
In 2005 Redjel was sentenced to three years imprisonment, suspended for five years, in Northern Ireland.
This was activated in March this year when Redjel was sentenced for further cashpoint crimes in Ulster.
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