Men jailed over London Underground text message scam

A fraudster in a scheme targeting London Tube passengers laundered £600,000 through gift cards, a court has heard.

Three men were jailed on Tuesday while a fourth received a suspended sentence after using homemade "SMS blasters" hidden in suitcases wheeled around the Underground to send scam texts.

Passengers received fake parcel delivery messages with links to enter their details, but the aim was to "plunder their bank accounts", Inner London Crown Court was told.

Although the total profits from the texting scheme were unclear, the court heard "top boss" Zhijia Fan, 48, personally gained more than £100,000.

Prosecutor Alex Davidson said Fan's co-defendants 20-year-old Daoyan Shang, Wan Hafiz, 41, and Gatis Lauks, 25, were thought to have received less than this amount, but Lauks had laundered about £600,000 through the purchasing of gift cards using stolen bank details.

Lauks was paid 5% commission for the gift cards he loaded and believed he personally made about £30,000 from the scheme, the hearing was told.

The court heard that after giving a "no-comment" interview to police in May 2025, Lauks returned five days later and confessed to his role in the fraud.

The 25-year-old revealed he had been recruited in June or July 2024 to purchase gift cards using stolen bank account details and Fan became his "handler", Davidson said.

Lauks explained a "lady in China" was able to provide him with "real-time remote technical support" and he would use an app on his phone loaded with stolen bank details to make in-store purchases, the prosecutor added.

The group used the gift cards to buy items including clothes, Pokemon cards, Louis Vuitton goods and video games, Davidson said.

Fan, of Winchester Street in Acton, west London, had asked Lauks to wheel around an SMS blaster in a suitcase but this did not happen because of issues with the device's battery, the court heard.

Police said an investigation was launched on 11 March 2025 when an off-duty British Transport Police (BTP) detective spotted a man with a suitcase containing holes and emitting a green flash sitting at a platform at King's Cross Underground station.

Officers searching Fan, Shang and Hafiz's London addresses seized 10,832 gift cards loaded with more than £80,000 in profits generated from fraud, BTP said.

Shang and Fan had previously been on trial at Inner London Crown Court but both changed their pleas to guilty on a charge of conspiracy to defraud between January and March 2025.

Fan was sentenced to four years and eight months and Shang, of Caxton Road in Shepherd's Bush, west London, to two years and 10 months.

Hafiz, of Queensway in Paddington, central London, was jailed for 14 months for conspiracy to defraud and 10 weeks for possession of articles for use in fraud, with both sentences to run concurrently.

Lauks, of Ealing, west London, previously pleaded guilty to a charge of fraud by false representation and was sentenced to two years, suspended for two years.

Sentencing the four men, the judge said the scheme was an "extremely sophisticated fraud" in which all of the defendants had been "knowing participants".

Another suspect, Jinhua Zhang, 58, is on the run, having fled when he was released on bail, the court heard.

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