Consumer News » Consumer court cases

Farmer Fined after Builder’s Labourer Injured in Fall

admin — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:14:46 +0000

Bruce Quarton, the owner of Moorhouse Farm in Hovingham, York, has been fined £6,000 and was ordered to pay costs of £1,530 at York Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to breaching Section 3(1) of the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974. Mr Quarton was prosecuted after a labourer was injured after falling from a building on Moorhouse Farm then had a no win no fee claim.

On the 28th October 2009, the worker, who has asked not to be named, was assisting a builder with a project on the farm when the incident occurred. Mr Quarton had hired the builder to convert an old farm building into a new cattle shed. In order to carry out the work, the builder was required to improve ventilation in the building by removing alternate ridge tiles from its roof.

Unfortunately, the building was equipped with no edge protection and Mr Quarton failed to supply any equipment or materials necessary to prevent workers from falling off or through the building. Crawling boards, for example, ought to have been used to spread the weight of any person working atop the roof.

Whilst working on top of the building, the unnamed labourer walked onto an unprotected roof light, which collapsed beneath his weight. Falling three metres to the concrete floor beneath, the worker sustained multiple serious injuries, including fractures to his skull, collarbone and right wrist. The worker also broke six ribs and ruptured his spleen.

Personal injury claims involving incidents in the agriculture industry are common in the UK, with most such accident claims brought after workers have suffered falls from height. Although Mr Quarton may have expected the builder in question to carry out his work safely, he was also required by the law to ensure that the work was carried out safely.

After the court hearing, David Green, a principal inspector for the Health and Safety Executive, said: “This work was poorly planned and executed from start to finish, with the end result being a horrific fall that could easily have killed the labourer”.

Mr Green added: “In agriculture, roughly half of deaths and medical negligence are as a result of falls involving work on fragile roofs. HSE offers ample free guidance on working at height online and through local Safety and Health Awareness Days, as it does on the safe use of farm machinery. Using a tractor and bucket as an impromptu lift is totally unacceptable. I hope today’s prosecution serves as a further reminder that farm machinery should only be used for its intended purpose and that work at height needs to be properly planned”.

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Car spares fraudster in court

Alan — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 07:49:26 +0000

For the charge of major motoring fraud a Dewsbury man received a suspended jail sentence. Ibrar Hussain ran an internet company offering car spares but would never make deliveries. Hussain owner of Universal Autosalvage Ltd. was sentenced to one year imprisonment that was suspended for two.

He also received 300 hours of community service and was requested to reimburse 11 customers after he pleaded guilty at Leeds Crown Court to 12 counts of fraud. He was the secretary of the business while his brother Jabbar Hussain was the company director.

The court heard about Hussain’s other previous convictions of fraud and his brother Jabbar acted as the company’s director for Ibrar as it would have been illegal because of his prior conviction.

In September 2009 the fraud was exposed when West Yorkshire Trading Standard Service officers were alerted to a number of complaints lodged against the business that had been also reported to Consumer Direct a national helpline for complaints.

The complaints all were of a similar nature where the customer would order car parts online from a third party broker site and the goods never were sent to the individual. There were a total of 60 complaints lodged to the Consumer Direct about the business and additional complaints had been lodged with the West Yorkshire Police.

The company was investigated by the West Yorkshire Police and Mr. Hussain was arrested and charged with the offences under the 2006 Fraud Act. There were 25 customers that went to Small Claims Court.

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Builder was a con man

Alan — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 07:32:22 +0000

A conman targeted an elderly Torquay woman by trying to charge her over £8,000 to run plastic edging along her roof. The women lives in Marldon but has not been named and was the victim of William Birch of Bridgewater, a 35 year-old conman. Birch pleaded guilty to two offences at the Torquay Magistrates Court under the Companies Act and Fraud Act 2006 in a case brought by Devon County Council Trading Standards Service.

The court was told how Birch would overcharge the woman for unnecessary work on her roof and for what he did it should have cost one third the price. He also failed to give the woman a legal document that is required allowing her to opt out of the contract within seven days. He also did not supply his name or the address for the company.

The company was registered under the name Roof and Home Agency. He made an uninvited visit in February 2010 in order to offer to run the plastic edging along her roof for just £99. When she agreed he said additional work was necessary and quoted her once at close to £8,000 and then he discounted the price to £3,800.

Birch also purchased telephone numbers in Devon including Torquay in order to make it look as though he was a local business and in fact he was not. Trading Standards officers, after visiting her property because of the complaint, promptly arrested Mr. Birch. No money was handed over by the woman and she was able to pay a reputable tradesman who then completed the work.

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Big time fraudster says he’s broke

Alan — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 06:17:33 +0000

Paul Cope fraudster, netted over £28 million in mortgage and leasing scams. He told a judge that he is broke with no money stashed and no hidden assets. The now disgraced Stafford financier is serving a term of 64 months and is facing the confiscation of everything he owns under the Proceeds Crime Act.

At the Stafford Crown Court hearing the court was told he benefited from a fraud of £25 million plus another £3 million from a mortgage fraud that involved his home in Barn Bank Lane. Cope formally headed the finance group Kingdom a group of Stafford based companies.

He orchestrated the scheme to fraud banks and finance houses to pay for non-existent equipment for hospitals through lease agreements that were bogus. Brian Challiner and Andrew Oxlade, two other Stafford businessmen were involved as well and both have been jailed.

The court heard from Mr. James Fletcher for the Crown that some of Copes assets that total £400,000 have been agreed. But Cope was disputing tow other sums of £100,000 and £121,000 and there is also the possibility of further hidden assets. He breached a restraining order whilst on bail awaiting his trial. He was remanded to custody.

Mr. Fletcher told the court that Cope was the type who would try and hide or put out of reach assets of the Crown. He is the one that needs to persuade the court there are no more assets. When Cope gave evidence he essentially said he has nothing.

He admitted to breaching the restraining order including depositing money for a Range Rover for his wife Nicola and his children and paying £300 to the vet but he said they were done out of desperation. Asked why he spoke to an estate agent about an expensive home, he replied he was only trying to rent one.

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Langbar International’s ex chief executive goes to jail

Alan — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 21:46:24 +0000

Langbar International’s ex chief executive of the £357 shell company, which collapsed six years ago causing huge losses for stockholders, has been sentenced to one year in jail and cannot be a company director for five years. His act was described as fraud of a grand scale by the The Serious Fraud Office.

On Monday Stuart Pearson was found guilty on three counts of misleading investors. He was guilty of falsely claiming the Aim listed investment company originally called Crown Corporation had assets held by Banco do Brasil with some assets being transferred to Langbar. August 1 will be the confiscation hearing.

Many private and institutional investors including Gartmore and Merrill Lynch lost millions of pounds after they had invested in the company. They had been attracted by the £357m Pearson said was in the bank in the Netherlands and Brazil.

The SFO director Richard Alderman said the fraud was of the grand scale and with little regard for integrity of the financial markets or for the inevitable losses and problems caused to the investors. The investigators worked closely with Spanish authorities and the City of London police in a painstaking investigation. No one else was charged in the case by SFO.

Mariusz Rybak found Crown in 2003 and described the business as one that bought underperforming companies and turning them around and then selling them for a profit. The Bermuda based company was on Aim that year but shares fell sharply following a few deals and there was a rights issue. Pearson joined Crown as CEO in 2005 after the company took over his firm.

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Man fakes death in half million pound fraud

Alan — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 06:29:34 +0000

Yesterday a Scot admitted to faking his death in a 520,000 pound scam of his insurance company. Anthony McErlean was thought have met his death in Honduras after being run over by a cabbage truck in 2009. The sixty-seven year old was said to have been killed by a fake witness who claimed his body was taken by farm workers in the truck and they took care of it.

The deceased then tried to claim his insurance in his wife’s name. But the insurers did not fall for his scam and did not extend a penny. Instead the Insurance Fraud Bureau was alerted by Glasgow’s Ace European insurance. Detectives were able to trace McErlean the father of two to Kent and found he had a credit card in Green’s name. They arrested the Scot and his passport was taken and he was later bailed.

The next day he applied for a new passport and it was revealed yesterday that he claimed pensions in the name of his father in law who died in 2007. This case is similar to the John Darwin case where he faked his death in a canoe mishap and fled to Panama.

McErlean’s faked witness statement said he was hit by a cabbage truck as he changed a tyre on his vehicle in the village of Santa Rosa de Aguan. He appeared yesterday at Canterbury Crown Court to be advised he faced a possible jail sentence. He pled guilty to fraud by claiming in his wife’s name over a half million pounds of death benefits.

He admitted to stealing pension funds and he also admitted to fraudulently attempting to get a passport by saying he had lost his. The Recorder Peter Gower told him he faced a jail sentence and was asked if he understood, he answered that he did.

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T-Mobile employees fined for selling data

Alan — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 06:05:32 +0000

Two former T-Mobile employees have been fined £73,000 for theft and selling data after the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) concluded a successful case against them. Darren Hames and David Turley pleaded guilty under Section 55 of the Data Protection Act have to repay £28,700 and £45,000 respectively as well as court costs.

A portion of the repayment goes to ICO under the Proceed of Crime Act in order to fund further investigative staff training. This marks the first time the ICO has asked for these types of funds. Christopher Graham an Information commissioner hopes this case serves as a reminder to the ICO is cracking down on data theft and can track down those who are responsible.

This marks the final chapter in the investigation that helped to expose the criminals that were behind a lucrative illegal trade of mobile phone contact information. Many felt those if they have contact with customer details and they use it to their personal benefit that it will go undetected.

This case shows that, that is not always the case. There is usually an audit trail to follow and the ICO will do everything in their power to undercover any wrong doing. The investigation began by ICO in December of 2008 and a report will be published detailing all about how the case unfolded, in due course on their website.

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Swindon post office cashier steals from pensioners

Alan — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 02:04:58 +0000

The trial has opened regarding the cashier who allegedly fleeced the pensioners who she served at Gorse Hill Post Office. 29 year old Rajwinder Samra, from Colborne Street in Swindon, is accused of taking hundreds of pounds from eight customer’s bank accounts by persuading them to enter their PIN numbers a second time. Samra, who denies all 26 charges of fraud, appeared at Swindon Crown Court to hear the charges read out.

The prosecutor, Colin Meeke, said in his opening speech that when the pensioners had attempted to withdraw cash at the Cricklade Road branch were wrongly told by the accused that their PIN numbers had failed to register, and asked to re-enter it. She then pocketed the second withdrawal.

Joyce Fenwick, a great grandmother, is one of the accused victims, and it is claimed that Samra conned her on five separate occasions. Mr. Meeke then showed documents to the jury that he said showed there has been several double transactions taken from the bank account of Mrs. Fenwick, and that there were only seconds between some of them.

He said that pensioner had gone into the post office and asked if she could withdraw £100. Samra had then said certainly, pop your card in, now your PIN. Samra had then claimed that the PIN hadn’t registered and could she take the card back out and repeat the process. She then gave the pensioner the amount she had asked to withdraw, and when nobody was looking pocketed the second withdrawal.

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Senior surveyor in £10m mortgage scam

Alan — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 02:01:27 +0000

The jury at the Old Bailey has heard about the part a senior surveyor who is married to a police officer is said to have played in a £10m mortgage scam, and received money and cars as her reward. Mary Jane Rathie is said to have deliberately overvalued 5 upmarket properties in London for a woman called Joanne Pier, and received money transfers and cheques totalling £900,000, as well as a Range Rover Sport and a Bentley Continental.

The cars have a combined value of just under £200,000, and were both registered to Rathie’s husband David, an officer in the Metropolitan force. Pier, who has since disappeared, used the false valuations to obtain mortgages worth £10m from the Royal Bank of Scotland, of which £9.5m was dependent on Rathie’s valuations.

Rathie, from Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, denies the five charges of fraud that were alleged to have taken place between May 2007 and June 2009. Both she and her husband also deny a charge of concealing criminal property. Rathie worked for Ashdown Lyons in Finchley in North London, and her RICS membership was suspended for a year in November. She first met Pier in 2007 when she went to Ashdown Lyons with a list of properties she wanted valued.

The court heard that in June 2007, Rathie, who had married in the May, told her employers about Pier offering her £100,000 as a wedding gift. This was twice her annual salary, but said that she had declined the gift. The prosecutor said that at the time she was in the financial position to refuse such a present, but only 6 months later her position had changed dramatically.

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£1.25m mortgage fraud sends mother of three to jail

Alan — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 17:55:43 +0000

A mother of three and former legal executive has been jailed for her participation in a £1.25m mortgage fraud that involved fake mortgage applications. Humaira Shah, 46, of Luton submitted different applications to a number of lenders that amounted to an attempt of almost £3m in fraud.

She was part of a network of organized crime and was recruited by the group because of her position as property conveyancer. Before authorities could catch up with her she had already pocketed over £1.25 million through the scams. She was convicted of six fraud offences and 11 counts of converting criminal property at Luton Crown Court.

The jury heard the plans that Shah had made of starting over in a new life in Liberia after having opened a foreign bank account and a business there. She is not thought of as the ring leader in the recent scam.

Zyed Zeesahn Maroof known as Mr. Big is said to have fled the country with a large proportion of the scam money that had quickly been deposited into accounts and even more quickly withdrawn or transferred.

A total of over £1 million remained unaccounted for. Before she was struck off as legal executive she had opened two law offices in Luton both with the same address. She also was guilty of acts intending to pervert public justice because of a fake immigration process.

She was found guilty by jury after having denied all charges. The court was told that she made very little from the fraud and that she had been corrupted by others. The structure of purchasing properties on mortgages is dependent upon the integrity and honestly of conveyancers, the judge told her.

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