A man who was caught overtaking dangerously on a busy dual carriageway claimed he was not driving his car at the time of the offence and instead used an unknown person’s name and details in a bid to get away with it. Samal Abubaker Mawlood, aged 37, was driving his Audi A5 on the A48 near Pensarn on the outskirts of Carmarthen on May 22, 2019.
When dashcam footage of his driving was submitted to GoSafe a notice of intended prosecution was sent to his address as he was the registered keeper of the car. But Mawlood, of Prospect Place, Pembroke Dock, told officers he was not driving at the time the car was spotted “performing a dangerous overtake” and instead blamed the incident on another man, from the Birmingham area, who he claimed had borrowed his vehicle on the day in question.
Letters were then sent to the address of the man and police even received a response to confirm that he, and not Mawlood, had been driving when the offence took place in Carmarthen. Further correspondence was ignored and the man was convicted of the offence. To get the latest Carmarthenshire stories sent directly to you for free click here.
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However, 10 months after the case had seemingly concluded, GoSafe were contacted by the man who said that his details had been falsely supplied to police by someone else. In fact he had only realised that he’d been convicted of the driving offence when he was declined for a new car insurance policy.
This led GoSafe to launch an investigation and through looking at telecommunications data and bank transactions it was clear that the man who had been prosecuted had in fact not been in Wales when the overtaking manoeuvre took place. To add insult to injury the man had also received further points on his driving licence for other things he was not responsible for and it was eventually discovered that someone had been supplying his details to drivers around the country as part of a scam to help people avoid prosecution after they had committed driving offences.
Mawlood was then interviewed in relation to the original offence and telecommunication checks showed his phone had been in the relevant location in Carmarthen at the time of the offence. According to GoSafe he initially admitting that the phone had been in his possession but then changed his story to claim that he had left in the car while it was being loaned to the man from Birmingham.
However as a spokesman for GoSafe explained: “The telecommunications work showed that multiple calls had been made from Mr Mawlood’s phone close to the time of the offence. These calls were also shown to have come from near the Pensarn area. Inquiries with the recipients of the calls confirmed that they all knew Samal Mawlood but had no prior knowledge of the driver he named.
“If Mr Mawlood had provided his details correctly and admitted the offence when he first received the notice of intended prosecution he would have either received three points on his licence, alongside a fine, or he would have needed to attend a driver improvement course.” Instead Mawlood appeared at Swansea Crown Court and pleaded guilty to a charge of perverting the course of justice. He was sentenced to eight months in prison and disqualified from driving for 10 months.
