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A fraudster has used a message of support from Jeremy Corbyn in a bid to stay out of jail over Christmas.

The Labour leader sent the letter in May on behalf of his constituent Mohamed Dahir, 23, who was standing trial for his part in a £600,000 scam on frail pensioners.

Vulnerable victims with an average age of 83 were phoned up by fraudsters who pretended to be from their bank, a court heard.

A Met Police spokesman said the wider scam was uncovered after separate counter-terror police spotted "irregular bank transfers for large sums" to someone who then travelled to Syria.

The Old Bailey was told the letter - sent when Mr Corbyn was a backbench MP - said Dahir should be granted bail ahead of the trial because he had "roots in the area".

He was duly freed during the case - but was then remanded in custody with three others today after being convicted of conspiracy to commit fraud.

Despite Dahir being found guilty, his barrister Patrick Harte brought up the seven-month-old letter again today in a bid to keep him as a free man until he is sentenced in the new year.

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(Image: Christopher Furlong)

Judge Anuja Dhir QC refused, saying now Dahir had been found guilty there were significant grounds to believe he would fail to surrender.

Mr Corbyn's spokesman said today: "Jeremy Corbyn condemns the actions of his constituent as appalling acts against vulnerable people and wholly unacceptable."

A source close to the Labour leader said he was approached by Dahir before his trial, and wrote a letter in what is standard practice for a constituency MP.

The source added "this was before the full facts of the case had emerged" and was on the basis of what he had been told about Dahir being unlikely to abscond.

Dahir was one of four men from north London to be convicted of involvement in the fraud against 18 elderly victims from across southern England with an average age of 83.

Dahir, Shakaria Aden, 21, Yasser Abukar, 23, and Mohammed Abokar, 28, were found guilty of conspiracy to commit fraud between May last year and May 2015. Ibrahim Farah, 23, was cleared of the same charge.

Abokar was convicted of converting criminal property - £9,000 belonging to Nanette Goldthorpe - on or around January 29 this year.

The trial heard how the victims, aged in their 70s, 80s and 90s and from Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Bedfordshire, London and Kent, were phoned up by men posing as police officers investigating a fraud at their bank.

(Image: Getty)

They were advised to transfer money or hand over cash for "safekeeping", when in reality they were being ripped off.

The fake officer might say they had someone in custody who was caught attempting to use a cloned card in a high street store such as Argos.

Prosecutor Kevin Dent told the jury: "Can you imagine your alarm on receiving a phone call like that from somebody purporting to be a police officer, saying there is fraud going on in your bank account?

"If you can imagine the alarm you might have, then think about the amount of alarm and distress to somebody considerably older than yourselves, perhaps less robust."

By 2015, the con had moved on to include informing victims there was an "inside job" involving counterfeit money, the court heard.

Mr Dent said the variety of "tricks" deployed by the conmen included playing on family ties.

(Image: PA)

One victim was told a grandchild was caught up in the fraud and co-operating with the police was the only way of sorting out that problem, Mr Dent said.

Time and again, the conmen would advise their victims to call 999 or their bank's fraud department to verify the details straight away, but they would not hang up so the elderly people would simply be reconnected.

The prosecutor told jurors: "It's very clever but something very simple and something that was used again and again. A really good con trick."

One victim, an 89-year-old woman, was conned into transferring £9,000 into the account of Abokar, who withdrew the cash and "almost immediately" took it into the Hippodrome Casino.

An elderly man lost £113,000 while another lady was tricked out of £130,000, the court heard.

Mr Dent said the fraudsters believed that once the money had been turned into cash it would then be "anonymous" and police would never be able to trace it back to the victims.

But the primary organiser of the fraud, who has already pleaded guilty, was found with a number of cash bands from the same bank branch as one of the victims, jurors were told.