OFFICE BEARERS

CHAIRMAN               
David Martin             
Tel. 07597 301748

DEPUTY CHAIRMAN               
John Parker              
Tel. 07970 568425

SECRETARY              
Allan Black              
Tel. 07512 022949

TREASURER              
Duncan Pickard             
Tel. 01334 870203

TALKS CONVENOR        
Graeme Hogg        
Tel. 01334 653043

COMMITTEE MEMBERS       
Jim Lawrence           
Maurice Shepherd             
David Sinclair 

ASSIST. SECRETARY   
Vic Broad

ASSIST. TALKS CONVENOR   
Bill Bowman

TALK RECORDERS              
Vic Broad 
Tony Miklinski           
Brian Murray             
Graham Pirie

...........................

Wednesday

11 June 2025

10.00am

Talk: 'Thank you for the Musick' - the life and times of James Oswald.

Presenter: Tom Davison

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Club News

Secretary email: macblack.author@gmail.com

There was a good attendance at the meeting in Castlehill Community Hall on 28th May, Chairman David Martin began the meeting using an AI presentation that included a thank you to club office bearers; Tony Miklinski (Cupar Development Trust) explaining the possible use of the ex-Argos building in Cupar; Graeme Hogg on a charity cycle for Parkinsons Research; and some background on today's speaker, Shaun Galloway.

Shaun Galloway, son of our member David, retired in 2017 after 30 years in Police Force that included 18 years in money laundering, counter terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking and fraud. Now head of Training at Cognitas Global. His talk is entitled 'Fraud and Financing Terrorism'.

"Fraud and Financing Terrorism"

Our Speaker, Sean Galloway, now retired, was a Senior Detective in the Metropolitan Police, and today explained the means by which a criminal gang was brought to justice.

In a period between January and October, Metropolitan police were alerted by reports of a series of bank frauds involving telephone scams where an individual kept victims talking while his associates gained access to their bank accounts and emptied them.

The criminal was very convincing and used a varieties of accents from every part of the UK to convince victims to give him details of their bank accounts which his associates attacked. He was assisted by a number of bank employees who allowed counterfeit passports to be used to open fake bank accounts which were used to launder the money abroad

The criminals used sophisticated internet techniques to target 750 RBS customers in the biggest cyber fraud that Metropolitan police had dealt with. The monies were laundered in a variety of ways such as flying out with bags of cash to UAE and purchasing bars of gold which were used in the souks to purchase expensive goods and jewellery. Seven missiles were purchased for terrorist groups in Syria and they traded in a variety of goods including 2500kg of firewood. They also financed groups who were involved in people trafficking.

They were making £500,000 to £1.5 million every month. They were finally brought to justice by simple mistakes by having photos of their “mules” with bags of cash on mobile phones and leaving finger prints on false passports and bank cards.

The ring leader, Freezan Hameed Choudhary, was responsible for £130m fraud and was jailed for 8 years plus an extra 4 years as he refused to divulge where the rest of missing millions were. The other gang members were sentenced to a variety of terms for conspiracy to launder money.

The online crime and fraud unit said, “This has been the largest covert proactive operation the MET has ever undertaken against cyber-enabled crime”.

Brian Murray