TWO Bolton men handled hundreds of thousands of pounds of fraudulently-obtained money after bogus emails supposedly from major banks were sent to people all over the world.

Sarfaz Patel and Siddik Bangdiwala allowed large sums of cash to be deposited into their bank accounts, before being passed on to other people in cash or by bank transfer, Bolton Crown Court heard.

The men handled more than £220,000 obtained illegally from people around the world.

The emails had been sent to people, purporting to be from banks, asking them to pay sums into accounts belonging to Patel or Bangdiwala.

A police investigation began after an email, claiming to be from Barclays Bank, was sent to a man called James Wilson on March 1, 2012, asking him to transfer funds into an account held by Bangdiwala.

But Mr Wilson contacted Barclays and discovered that they had not sent the email.

The account details were traced to Bangdiwala and police searched his home in Willows Lane on April 11 the same year.

There they found a receipt for a £25,000 payment to Patel’s account.

Police seized bank statements for Bangdiwala, which showed several payments of a few thousand pounds had been made to him.

Some of the people asked to deposit funds to Patel or Bangdiwala’s accounts were from the Netherlands, Australia and Sweden, the court was told.

The pair both admitted charges of money laundering.

Anwar Afzal, defending, said Bangdiwala moved to the UK from India in 2007 and had limited knowledge of the English language or the banking system.

Patel, aged 35, of Florence Street, Daubhill, admitted handling £186,000 and was paid £2,500 for his role.

He was jailed for eight months. Bangdiwala, aged 33, of Willows Lane, Deane, was given a four-month sentence, suspended for two years, after receiving £36,411.16 into his account.

He was paid nothing for his part in the crime. Neither of the men instigated the original fraud offence.