IN THE
NEWS...IN THE NEWS..
LEICESTER TAXI DRIVER’S £70K EBAY SCAM TRICKED BUYERS OF BMW, FORD AND VAUXHALL CARS
A Leicester taxi driv- er made tens of thousands of pounds in an elaborate eBay fraud ripping off car dealerships. Jamie Walker, 46, devised a sophisti- cated nationwide scam which allowed people to mark their cars’ service books with stamps show- ing they had been looked at by dealer- ship mechanics when they had not. According to Leices- tershireLive, Walker made more than £70,000 over two and a half years through the fraudu- lent sale of kits which
included counterfeit stamps
and ink pads. He would design and order
the fake
stamps, seemingly from dealerships in- cluding BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, Ford, Vauxhall and Evans Halshaw, which he would then sell using an eBay account called RetroJamie. He sold some 11,500 stamps before the authorities caught up with him. When police went to his home they found a BMW and a Range Rover, both with pri- vate number plates, and a Ford Galaxy parked on the drive- way. Jane Sarginson, pro- secuting on behalf
of Leicester City Council, said various motoring industry trade bodies have become aware of Walker’s fraud from September 2015. eBay removed at least 30 of Walker’s adverts - on each occasion sending him an email ex- plaining why. He was sent a ‘cease and desist’ notice but ignored it and con- tinued to order and sell the stamps. Mrs Sarginson said falsely marking ser- vice books allowed their
sellers to
inflate the price they asked of purchasers. She said:
“They (Walker’s adverts)
falsely assert the stamps are genuine and the real deal.” The court heard Walker was arrested at his home in Octo- ber 2017 when evidence of his scam was found. Mrs Sarginson said: “He admitted what he was doing and that he would not do it again.” He was released but then set up a new email address and PayPal account and used the eBay accounts of his son and partner. Judge Robert Brown said the defendant had caused financial loss to car buyers by helping them be
misled and also damaged the repu- tations of honest dealerships. He told Walker: “There could only have been one intention and that was fraud. “There is no legiti- mate purpose be- hind ordering ser- vice stamps save to make an unlawful profit at other peo- ples’ expense. “A large number of dealerships were the victims of your of- fences because you used their details. “Purchasers lost out, dealerships lost out.” He also said there was a potential risk to public safety
because owners of cars may put off ser- vicing their vehicles as they wrongly believed it was not needed. However he accepted MoTs, not service books, were the benchmark for roadworthiness. Walker was jailed for 12 months at Leices- ter Crown Court in August after admit- ting three charges of fraudulent trad- ing
and
eight
offences under the 1994 Trademark Pre- vention Act. Mrs Sarginson said Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) action was being looked at to recover the money made by Walker.
28
OCTOBER 2019
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