If you were going to pose as an insurance broker, how would you go about it?
Would you, perhaps, emphasise the ‘people business’ aspect of the role by standing smiling, in a smart but not too swanky suit, with your hand extended in a friendly but professional greeting?
Maybe you would pose behind a busy but tidy desk poring diligently over the small print of competitive insurer quotes for your (quite possibly imaginary) client’s business from (quite possibly imaginary) insurers?
Or would you perhaps, like the sadly missed Andrew Paddick of yore, strut up and down a stage waving a baton, clad perhaps a tad ill-fittingly in a military costume intended to suggest inspiring Spartan wartime leader Monty Montgommery of Alamut?
If you really are in actual fact a broker, it’s entirely up to you how you choose to pose as one (although on balance we’d advise against option three – perhaps you could alternate one and two). But if you’re not in fact a broker, then posing as one could land you in a heap of trouble.
That’s what happened to curiously named Bradford resident Antique Khan (and yes we are sure about that name, for once), 36, who’s just been sentenced at the Old Bailey to pay back £235,000 (or face two years in the slammer) after he was found to be selling fraudulent insurance policies to over 50 local motorists.
Unless they were paying £5k a pop, Antique must, presumably, have conned quite a few more than 50 would-be policyholders (or ghost policyholders as they are technically known in case such as this).
Ironically, they could have saved themselves the pain of high-cost uninsurance by delving a little more deeply into past track record of their friendly local “broker” (who previously served a year in gaol, after he was slapped with a similar sentence for a distinctly similar offence by the exact same court).
On the basis that Mr Khan has probably splurged that £235,000 already on fast living, loose cars and luxury women, he’ll probably be going with the gaol-time option again on this occasion.
But if you’re a Bradford local (Big shoutz to all the Brad Pack Massive!) and you see Old Antique back on the street in a year or two’s time, striking those brokerly poses – do everyone a favour – tell him to give it rest!
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