Royal Mail workers 'stole £750,000 from packages and sent dirty money abroad'

Two Royal Mail workers are accused of stealing £750,000 from packages and sending dirty cash to Pakistan.

Mehdi Raza, 38, and Zafran Mahmood, 34, allegedly stole the money between January 2023 and September 2024.

Court papers state the men were employed as agency workers at the Royal Mail in Glasgow’s Dennistoun.

It is claimed that they took a quantity of special delivery parcels containing mobile phones and £750,000 in cash or foreign currency.

A second allegation claims that Raza was found to be in possession of £159,842 of criminal property at his home in Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire, on September 16, 2024.

The third charge says both men concealed, transferred and removed criminal property from Scotland between January 2023 and September 2024.

It is alleged that they repeatedly transferred sums of money between one another as well as from Scotland to Pakistan.

The transfers abroad are claimed to have been made to accounts in their own names, as well as to others’ accounts.

The charge says Raza and Mahmood, in an effort to conceal the source of the money, pretended to Barclays Bank that property in Pakistan had been sold at a value greater than what they had in fact sold it for.

It is further alleged that the pair claimed that the sold two motor vehicles when they had not.

A final fraud charge says that Raza made the false claims in an attempt to justify the source of his income to allow him to continue to have an account with Barclays Bank.

Raza and Mahmood, of the city’s Knightswood, pleaded not guilty to the charges against them at Glasgow Sheriff Court.

A further hearing will take place next month.