A South Wales police offer is facing jail after trying to frame his innocent ex-girlfriend for being an armed criminal.
Jealous PC Abubakar Masum, 24, wrongly accused Mia Pitman, 23, of a number of bogus crimes via anonymous tip-offs after she dumped him.
Pitman is currently studying criminology at university and had hoped to enter the police force one day.
However, she found herself arrested by armed police while stacking shelves at her part-time job in Swansea Marina Tesco.
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Her university accommodation was also raided by police officers who were searching for a gun that ultimately did not exist.
According to Cardiff Crown Court, Masum grew ‘obsessed’ with Pitman after she ended things due to finding out he was seeing another woman.
He soon began making ‘false, untrue and malicious’ claims against her and other men in anonymous calls to Crimestoppers.
The bizarre list of accusations against Pitman included shooting dead an Albanian gangster, hiding a gun in her garden, and plotting murders with Tesco colleagues.
In one call Masum reported: “Mia Pitman is storing is a handgun on behalf of Leon Croucher. He is a known Class A drug dealer.”
The call went on to say that Pitman and her workmate – a Mr Croucher – 'planned to shoot' a man who allegedly owed them drug money.
Following the anonymous tip, Pitman and Croucher were arrested mid-shift by armed police, while a further 20 armed officers raided her student home.
Certain members of the Swansea police force soon began to suspect Masum was behind the ordeal, describing the repeated calls against Pitman as ‘malicious’.
Masum was then arrested, after which he admitted to making all of the calls but said they were ‘in good faith’ from real posts he witnessed on Pitman’s Snapchat.
Masum ‘felt he had to make the reports because he feared for his own safety’, the court heard.
The 24-year-old denied two counts of perverting the course of justice and unauthorised access of a police computer.
He was soon found guilty following a two-week trial at Cardiff Crown Court.
Following the verdict, his barrister Graham Trembath QC asked for Masum to be given bail so he could complete a house sale but Judge Michael Fitton remanded him in custody.
He told Masum: “The nature of the offence means it is inevitable you will be met with a substantial sentence of immediate imprisonment. Put in a nutshell, I don't trust you.”
Masum will be sentenced next month.
Abbi Murray