Three men were on Friday jailed for deliberately causing a car crash as part of an insurance scam leading to the death of a young woman of Indian origin, Baljinder Gill.
Ms. Gill (34) was killed after her car was struck by one of the gang's vehicles in Denham, Buckinghamshire, close to London. She was not the intended target but was not able to avoid a van which the gang had deliberately driven into another car on June 11, 2011, the court was told.
The men — Radoslaw Piotr Bielawski (24), Jacek Kowalczyk (32) and Andrzej Boguslaw Skowron (25) — were sentenced to ten years each for causing death by dangerous driving and conspiring to commit fraud.
In a statement, Ms. Gill’s family said she was "the innocent victim of a cold-blooded and calculated incident".
"Our family will never recover from this tragic event which took the life of our beautiful daughter, sister and truly loved member of our family from us," they said.
The “crash for cash” scam in which cars are deliberately crashed in order to make false claim costs the insurance industry £392 million a year, the court heard.
Passing the sentences at Reading Crown Court, the judge Justice Sweeney said this was the “first such enterprise to result in a death to come before the courts”.
“It is clear that Miss Gill's death has had and continues to have an absolutely devastating effect on her family, especially her mother and brother, who close afterwards suffered the loss of her other brother to cancer,” he said.
