Heavy penalty for car clocking duo
Monday 28 May 2012
A total of £90,000 has been confiscated from two Coventry men guilty of a lucrative car clocking scam.
Jamie Barthram and Darren Lee were ordered to pay £45,000 each, under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. This included £27,005 in compensation to the people who bought the clocked cars.
Both men have six months to pay the money or they face being imprisoned for 15 months.
Mr Barthram and Mr Lee were sentenced to 12 months in prison for the fraud in October last year. The punishment was suspended for 18 months but they were ordered to complete 300 hours community service.
The original court case proved that more than 820,000 miles were wiped off 14 vehicles, with more clocked vehicles coming to light as the investigation progressed.
Mr Bathram, of Holyhead Road, was a sole trader in the buying and selling of second hand cars who generally used the name JB Trading while Mr Lee, of Wall Hill Road, was the sole director of HAS Engineering Ltd.
They operated from the same trading address on Rowleys Green Lane Industrial Estate.
On 27th October 2011 Mr Barthram, aged 48, pleaded guilty to 10 counts of fraud and six counts relating to false service book records.
It related to the sale of 10 vehicles whose odometer readings had been deliberately and dishonestly reduced in order to deceive the purchaser into paying more for the vehicle than its true worth. The increase in value for the vehicles in which he was involved was £16,643.
Mr Lee, aged 41, pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud and four counts relating to false service book records in respect of the sale of seven vehicles. The increase in value for the vehicles in which he was involved was £10,362.
Three of the vehicles were sold jointly by the pair.
Allan Harwood from Coventry City Council's trading Standards team, hoped the ruling would send out a strong message.
He said "This is a substantial penalty and serves as a warning to would be criminals that crime does not pay.
"It is particularly pleasing to see that 14 unsuspecting purchasers of these vehicles will now be compensated through the efforts of Trading Standards.
"This was a complex case that involved a substantial amount of work to identify their assets, their criminality and determine the financial benefit they received."
