A Kilburn conman who defrauded a property company and a mortgage lender out of more than £1.25m and bought gold bullion with some of the proceeds has been jailed.

Abid Hussain, of Victoria Road, was sentenced to five years and nine months’ imprisonment at Southwark Crown Court on August 18 following an investigation by the Met’s Fraud and Linked Crime Online (FALCON) Unit.

The 40-year-old was arrested in June 2016, charged two months later, and on August 14 this year was convicted of two counts of fraud, one count of money laundering and one count of attempting to pervert the course of justice at the same court.

Det Con Richard Kirk, who led the investigation, said: “A swift investigation has ensured that Hussain will now have time to reflect on what he has done in prison. Evidence showed that Hussain had meticulously planned these frauds for some time. We are pleased to see he has received a custodial sentence that reflects the seriousness of his offences.”

Hussain contacted police in May 2016 stating that he had been a victim of fraud and reported that a property he owned in North Acton had been sold without his knowledge or permission for £480,000.

Officers from the Falcon Unit launched an investigation and soon established that Hussain himself had sold the property via an apparently legitimate process, and that the funds he had received were from the property company buying the premises.

Hussain then told police that more than £770,000 had been paid into his current account that appeared to be from the re-mortgage of another property he owned.

He denied making the mortgage application and said the account into which the proceeds of the sale were deposited did not belong to him, despite his name being on the account.

Hussain then spent £438,000 on 15kg of gold bullion, which he also denied.

By reporting the transactions as fraudulent, he aimed to make them void, leaving the property company and mortgage lender out of pocket.

CCTV enquiries revealed that he had bought the bullion then travelled to Pakistan.

Enquiries to establish what happened to the bullion are ongoing.