Couple grieving their daughter realise they've lost £560k life savings when police knocked on their door

The elderly victims of a "wicked" banking scam that saw them manipulated by fraudsters and fleeced of their life savings say they have been left "utterly bereft." The nine pensioners were among those targeted and then "controlled" by organised criminals who tricked out them out of an eyewatering £1.5 million.

Serial conman Azeem Mohammed, 33, who orchestrated proceedings from a swanky Salford apartment, has now been jailed for his "leading role" in the conspiracy.

At his sentencing hearing at Manchester Crown Court, details of the extraordinary lengths he and his accomplices went to convince the victims they were, as they claimed, fraud investigators from high-street banks, and the elaborate ways they then put pressure on and exploited them, were laid out.

READ MORE: From a flat in Salford, he ruined lives

The court heard of the enormous financial and psychological impact the offending had on their now fearful and mistrusting victims – who include a former bank manager – and whose lives and future plans have now been turned upside down.

One couple, who are in their 80s, alone lost more than half a million pounds as part of the offending led by Mohammed. The wife received a call on her landline from a man saying someone had tried to order an Amazon Parcel that was supposed to be delivered to Manchester for £600 and had tried to pay using her Barclays bank account.

The following day, she received a call from a man posing as a fraud investigator from the bank, who later put her onto a 'colleague' going by the name of Steven Cunningham, an identity that has now been linked to Mohammed.

After gaining her trust, he persuaded her to install an app called Team Viewer on her computer, which gave the scammers control of it, and