- Danyal Sajid jailed for eight months at Bradford Crown Court this week
- The Mail revealed his criminal operation after being sold bogus certificates
A playboy fraudster has been jailed after the Mail exposed him selling fake negative coronavirus certificates.
Danyal Sajid, 25 and from Bradford, paid no regard to the potential ‘disease and death’ he may have caused by selling the counterfeit documents which were required for Britons to travel abroad during the pandemic, a judge said.
The Mail revealed his criminal operation after he sold one of the bogus certificates – which he openly advertised on social media – to an undercover reporter for £75.
The reporter later met him on holiday in Dubai where he agreed to sell another 11 documents for £825 – and boasted how he had been blowing his illicit profits on luxury cars and a prostitute.
Sajid was arrested on 10 December 2020, five days after our story ran, and after a lengthy legal process to establish English law had jurisdiction over the ‘cross borders’ crime, eventually pleaded guilty to intentionally encouraging or assisting fraud.
Danyal Sajid, 25, has been jailed after the Mail exposed him selling fake negative coronavirus certificates
Sajid (facing the camera) meeting the Daily Mail investigator where he agreed to sell 11 selling fake negative coronavirus certificates for £825
Jailing Sajid for eight months at Bradford Crown Court this week, Recorder Ian Mullarky said Sajid was prepared to sell a large number of fake certificates for profit.
He said the travel restrictions had been put in place to protect people’s health.
‘You actively undermined that system, entirely,’ said the judge.
‘What you did was quite deliberate.
‘You sold certificates without any regard of the potential harm they could do – the spread of disease and possible death.’
The defence barrister had told the court that Sajid, who is now married and works as a taxi driver, had been suffering financial difficulties at the time and ‘saw this as an easy way out.’
But the judge told him that his claim was ‘difficult to reconcile with you being on holiday in Dubai at the time.’
Sajid had told the undercover reporter that in just a few days in Dubai he had hired a Range Rover, Mercedes G-Wagon, Mercedes GTC, Mercedes GTS and Mercedes S63, and was hoping to rent a Lamborghini before he returned home.
Other online footage showed him posing at a rooftop nightclub in the glamorous Five Palm Jumeirah hotel.
He bragged about spending £500 in a night at the venue and also described picking up a Spanish prostitute, who he said looked like an ‘Instagram model’ and who he paid £300 for the night.
Mr Sajid leaving the meeting with the investigator after agreeing to produce a fake document for a traveller he was told had already tested positive
The scammer said the loophole was easy to exploit because it is almost impossible for airlines and border staff to check if documents are genuine.
En route to Dubai he posted a picture of himself on his plane with the fake certificate, writing: ‘For those who didn’t believe it worked. Adiosssssss..’
Sajid is the third criminal to be jailed in the last seven months following exposes by the Mail Investigations Unit.
Albanian drug lord Selamet Mehmetaj was locked up for four-and-a-half years in August 2023 for running cannabis factories staffed by illegal immigrants that distributed drugs worth millions of pounds a year.
And in November people smuggler Muhamed Alievski was jailed following an undercover exposé of gangs helping foreign fugitives flee the UK.
