A taxi driver who preyed on a vulnerable 70-year-old passenger and extorted thousands of pounds from her has had his licence stripped by a council, magistrates and crown court judge.<\/p>\n
Tariq Mahmood, of Grange Street Burton on Trent, appeared at Leicester Crown Court on 30 November after appealing a 2022 decision by North West Leicestershire District Council (NWLDC) to remove his licence.<\/p>\n
The 50-year-old was reported to the council in 2022 for grooming a passenger, Lorna, and defrauding her of \u00a35,000.<\/p>\n
NWLDC\u2019s Licensing Sub-Committee agreed on 15 March 2022 to remove Mahmood\u2019s licence, but this decision was appealed to Leicester Magistrates Court and upheld.<\/p>\n
Mahmood appealed again, taking the decision to crown court. Judges at the court heard that before NWLDC received a complaint from the passenger\u2019s daughter, Mahmood had over nine years committed a large number of low-level offences including being banned from driving and road rage.<\/p>\n
Mahmood befriended Lorna after she used his taxi and over six months accepted up to 23 payments from her totalling \u00a35,000.<\/p>\n
Despite claiming to judges that the payments were loans, Mahmood could not demonstrate to NWLDC, magistrates or judges that he would be able to repay the money.<\/p>\n
Councillor Michael Wyatt, NWLDC Portfolio Holder for Communities and Climate Change, said:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are committed to keeping the travelling public safe, our continued defence of our 2022 decision to remove a licence because the danger the driver posed to the public is evidence of this.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cTaxi drivers are trusted to make sure the vulnerable get home safely. Everybody will have an experience of going out at night, someone getting into a bad state, the call is always \u201cput them in a taxi, get them home safe\u201d \u2013 taxi drivers should be trusted to do that.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A taxi driver who preyed on a vulnerable 70-year-old passenger and extorted thousands of pounds from her has had his licence stripped by a council, magistrates and crown court judge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instituteoflicensing.org\/news_archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}