Betting shop raider loses appeal gamble

A ROBBER caged for a terrifying raid on an Oldham betting shop after committing an almost identical hold-up has failed to convince top judges his sentence was too harsh.

Gambling junky Faraz Ahmed (25) left a bookies worker “humiliated” and afraid of returning to work after he threatened to stab her, snatching cash from the store.

Debt-ridden Ahmed, of Frederick Street, was jailed for four years and three months at Manchester Crown Court in February, after he admitted robbery at an earlier hearing.

Now three of the country’s most senior judges at London’s Court of Appeal have dismissed a sentence challenge by Ahmed, saying his punishment was justifiably severe.

Mr Justice Mackay said the self-confessed gambling addict was having a bad night on a slot machine, banging it in frustration prior to the raid in October, last year. He asked when the shop would shut and left at about 8.45pm but returned when the female member of staff was closing up alone, bursting in through a back door.

“Ahmed grabbed the back of her head, pushing her down and causing her to hit the back of a chair and bang her mouth,” the appeal judge added.

“He made repeated demands for money and threatened to stab her,” he said.

The raider seized £200 from an unlocked safe and £300 from the till before making his getaway, but was soon traced after police identified him from CCTV footage captured in the store.

Mr Justice Mackay said Ahmed had been handed eight months in prison at Manchester Crown Court in March, 2009, for a “virtually identical robbery.”

Ahmed wrote a letter to the crown court prior to his sentencing which was described by the appeal judge as an “effusive, well set-out expression of remorse.”

“It was an object lesson of how a young man can become a gambling addict,” he said.

But the appeal judge, sitting with Lord Justice Elias and Sir Roderick Evans, concluded: “This is a sentence that was a severe one, but necessarily so, particularly given the previous conviction.

“For these reasons, we would dismiss this appeal.”