A friend passed me this interesting article from a Birmingham news website about a Muslim criminal who posed as a police officer as part of a property scam. Mohammed Raja, aged 38, a former security guard at a police building, put together a fake police uniform and used stolen headed notepaper to pass himself off as an ‘economic crime investigator’ working for West Midlands Police.

Raja claimed that he was working for West Midlands Police dealing with property that had been seized under the provisions of the Proceeds of Crime Act. He told those he conned that he was in the process of disposing or houses belonging to criminals that he could sell to his victims at ‘bargain prices’. It is estimated that his con netted Raja approximately £180k.

Now as many people will know, impersonating a police officer is a very serious offence as is fraud by misrepresentation. Impersonating a police officer could incur a maximum sentence of six months gaol and fraud by misrepresentation can be punished by up to 10 years imprisonment. What is interesting about the case of Mohammed Raja is the apparent leniency of the sentence. He was handed a nine month prison sentence suspended for two years. I find this particular sentence pretty astonishing really. When you take into account the aggravating factors of this fraud, such as the very well crafted attempt at police impersonation and the large amount of money that this fraud appears to have netted, then I would have expected an immediate custodial sentence of six months at least.

This is one of those cases that will raise the question in the minds of many members of the public as to whether this offender got an easier ride because he is Muslim? If we ask ourselves what would be the outcome if you or I posed as a cop and cheated people out of nearly 200 grand then we would probably come to the answer that we would be looking at between six months and a year inside at bare minimum. When you consider the extent of the fraud that Raja was involved in and the fact that posing as a police officer undermines confidence in the police, nine months suspended for two years really does look like a totally ineffectual slap on the wrist. Is this another example of the ‘Muslim double standard’ that is allegedly operating in Britain’s courts? Unfortunately there is little in this case that would prove that this double standard does not exist.