Man who paid TikTok fixer £300 to clear spouse’s dashing factors jailed for 5 months
Hafeez Akram has been put behind bars after he was caught paying a TikTok scammer £300 to clear a set of driving points after his wife was caught speedin
Akram was jailed for five months(Image: In Pictures via Getty Images)
A “family man” has been jailed after he paid a TikTok scammer £300 to clear his wife’s points after she was caught speeding. Hafeez Akram, 50, said he panicked after his wife was caught driving her BMW at 47mph in a 40mph zone in April 2024.
The chef, from Bradford, was jailed at Bradford Crown Court for five months after pleading guilty to committing an act or series of acts with intent to pervert the course of public justice at an earlier hearing. The court heard how Akram’s wife was caught on camera at 7.40pm on April 13, 2024, travelling at 47mph in a 40mph zone.
A notice of intended prosecution (NIP) arrived at the couples home five days later. Prosecutor Jemima Stephenson-Finn told the court Akram told his wife he would “deal with” the speeding ticket as he “knew someone who would deal with the police to avoid penalty points”.
He contacted a TikTok account who claimed to be an expert in being able to legally avoid penalty points, and handed over £300 in cash. But a police investigation later revealed a name and address in Keighley provided for the nominated driver were not genuine, and that she did not exist.
Miss Stephenson-Finn branded Akram’s offending as “unsophisticated” adding that it “strikes at the heart of the administration of justice and almost invariably calls for a custodial sentence”.
Mitigating, Rebecca Young said: “He is extremely proud of his wife’s career. She is a lecturer. He works as a chef.
“He panicked that if she lost her licence, it might affect her job and acted without thinking through the consequences”.
She added: “He has panicked thinking he is helping his wife and then was mortified to realise that in fact he made the situation ten times more serious and potentially got his wife into an awful lot of trouble.”
Akram, who has four previous convictions for 13 offences including dangerous driving and driving while disqualified, was jailed for five months. Jailing Akram at Bradford Crown Court, Her Honour Judge Kate Rayfield said: “There was no good and compelling reason for you to do this other than to avoid points for your wife, and perhaps an increase in the car insurance.
“Those are matters that all of us who drive have to face if we end up inadvertently speeding or getting a ticket for some other reason.”
She continued: “Ultimately there was some planning to this as you sought out this man on TikTok who does this for a living. He, no doubt, never ends up in the dock.”
Judge Kate Rayfield added: “When someone plans to pervert the course of justice there can only be one outcome because the message has to go out to the public that if people do this, they go into prison. The message doesn’t go out if I don’t send you to prison.”
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