A killer delivery driver filmed himself in the house of a 71-year-old woman he murdered, dancing with a twerking model who would later turn on him and become a key witness.
Mohammed El-Abboud, 28, and Kusai Al-Jundi, 25, were jailed for at least 35 years each after they were found guilty of murdering an elderly divorcee they tried to ensnare in a £4.6million romance fraud.
They had plotted to steal from Louise Kam, 71, from Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, and trick her into signing power of attorney documents which they thought would give them control over her multi-million pound property portfolio.
After telling her “lie after lie” in their desperate attempts to rob her, they ended up brutally murdering the elderly woman in July 2021.
El-Abboud posted several TikToks dancing with Al-Jundi’s girlfriend, Maria Amariucai, in Ms Kam’s properties as if they owned them in the days leading up to her death.
At first, Al-Jundi tried to woo Ms Kam, claiming he loved her, but when this didn’t work he encouraged El-Abboud to strangle her with her hairdryer lead after they lured her to a three-bed home she owned in Barnet North London on the premise of a business meeting.
But their sick plot fell apart when El-Abboud confessed to Ms Amariucai.
In one of their many videos, El-Abboud can be seen slapping her on the bottom, and in another, filmed just two weeks before Ms Kam was killed, Ms Amariucai twerks.
In another video filmed on the last day Ms Kam was seen alive El-Abboud could be seen thrusting his groin towards the camera in her house.
Al-Jundi, a dad-of-three and the mastermind behind the brutal murder, celebrated it by buying his girlfriend a pair of diamond earrings worth £580.
The prosecutor Oliver Glasgow told the court that this was a generous gift for someone with no money but that Al-Jundi believed with Ms Kam dead and a signed power of attorney, he owned two expensive properties.
Ms Kam’s body was stuffed into a wheelie bin as Al-Jundi lied to her worried family, sending them messages from her phone pretending she had decided to travel to China.
But the body was later found at Al-Jundi’s parents’ home and the pair quickly turned on one another in court.
They would both later sob as they were convicted and jailed for life.
Al-Jundi was described as a ‘Walter Mitty’ fraudster, who claimed to be a millionaire with a string of girlfriends when in reality he was a shish kebab cook who saw every wealthy elderly woman as a possible victim.
After meeting Ms Kam he claimed to have “the backing of a multi-millionaire girlfriend” who would fund the purchasing of her properties.
But instead, the court heard how he told El-Abboud he would make a lot of money from Ms Kam’s death, and that he would pay the older man for killing her.
In a victim impact statement, Ms Kam’s son Gregory Kam said the family had been left in a state of “disbelief” at what had happened to her.
He said: “I deeply regret I was not able to do enough at the time to prevent my mother from falling for the lies of this wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“In addition to the initial shocking news of our mother’s disappearance and subsequent news of her murder, I was not only shocked but further angered and sickened to discover defendant one (Al-Jundi) enlisted the help of an accomplice (El-Abboud) to trick, entrap, overpower and murder a pension-age woman in her own home under the guise of what was supposed to be a business deal.”
During the trial, Mr Glasgow had told the jury that Al-Jundi was “prepared to stop at nothing” and his friend, El-Abboud, was “more than happy” to help in his fraudulent plan.
They targeted the trusting mother-of-two, who had previously owned a catering business with her ex-husband before going into rental properties.
She owned two north London properties – the £1.3 million house in Barnet and a shop with three flats in Willesden.
A friend had introduced her to Al-Jundi, who worked at the Yasmeen Sham Restaurant in Willesden and lived with his mother, wife and children in Harrow.
Al-Jundi boasted of having a wealthy girlfriend called Anna who was willing to put up £4.6 million to buy Ms Kam’s properties in a deal which involved avoiding tax.
Mr Kam had warned his mother it could be a scam but she was eager to go ahead, with the encouragement of her friend, jurors heard.
But what seemed to be a golden opportunity was a sham as Al-Jundi never intended to part with a penny, the court was told.
He instructed a solicitor to draw up legal papers to transfer Ms Kam’s properties into his name and got her to sign a Lasting Power of Attorney document in a bid to seize control of her finances.
Meanwhile, El-Abboud moved into Ms Kam’s Barnet house and treated it as his own.
Jurors saw a TikTok video of Romanian national El-Abboud boastfully showing people around the property.
The scam came to a head when Ms Kam made it clear she would not sign over the properties.
A meeting was arranged at the Barnet house but by the time Ms Kam realised something was amiss, it was too late.
Ms Kam was captured on CCTV entering the address on July 26 and was never seen alive again.
There was a violent struggle and Ms Kam was strangled with electrical cord, jurors were told.
The defendants then bundled up her body in a duvet and dumped it in a rubbish bin, which Al-Jundi later arranged to be collected and taken to his family home in the hope it would end up in landfill.
As part of the cover-up, Al-Jundi laid a false trail of messages on Ms Kam’s phone, claiming she had gone to China.
El-Abboud moved Ms Kam’s BMW car from the driveway of the Barnet house and sold it via Facebook Marketplace to an unsuspecting buyer for £1,450, the court was told.
He also posted a TikTok video showing him dancing and gyrating in the driveway.
He went on to confess to Ms Kam’s killing to Ms Amaiucai saying he was acting on Al-Jundi’s orders, it was claimed.
Mr Kam was in hospital with Covid but became so concerned for his mother that he reported her missing to police.
A search of her property led to the discovery of the hairdryer dumped in a hedge and Ms Kam’s body was eventually discovered at Al-Jundi’s home, hidden beneath turf in the wheelie bin.
The defendants were connected to the murder through DNA and blood.
In mitigation, the court heard the Syrian community in Willesden had been left shocked and Al-Jundi, a married father-of-three, had “thrown away” everything as a result of greed.
El-Abboud “rued the day” he ever walked into the restaurant where Al-Jundi had worked. Had they not met, he would never have got involved in anything more than petty crime, the court was told.
