A two-million mile clocking ring has been broken up by Kent Trading Standards with the clockes getting suspended sentences.
Ryan Regan, 34, of Wallace Way, Broadstairs, Thomas Hamilton, 34, of Hugin Avenue, Broadstairs, and Darren Cradduck, 59, of Beech Avenue, Chartham, all pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud in a case heard at Canterbury Crown Court.
Regan and Hamilton were both sentenced to two years’ imprisonment suspended for two years. Cradduck was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years.
They have all been ordered to complete 200 hours of community servic. The judge also awarded £32,500 in compensation with further payments to be determined at a future hearing.
Between February 2016 and November 2018, layers of evidence showed the three were key players in a large-scale so-called ‘clocking’ scam with more than two million miles wound back from 23 high mileage vehicles bought at auction then sold online across the country, purposely deceiving the unsuspecting 22 buyers to inflate the market value and boost their profits.
Seized CCTV footage from premises in Sandwich showed Cradduck plugging in his laptop and tampering with the dashboards, in slang terms giving the vehicles a ‘haircut’. More than 100,000 miles were wiped from 10 of the vehicles. The largest deduction in one go was 163,000.
Kent Trading Standards got its first lead in 2018 with a van bought by a father for his son-in-law, medically retired from the army and starting a carpentry business. It did not make the journey from the pick-up point in Ramsgate home to North Yorkshire and when a phone call was made to the dealer, the new owner was threatened with physical violence
Operation Blackboard was launched, supported by National Trading Standards (NTS) Tri Region Investigation Team, when requested information back from car auction houses highlighted more than 20 trading names linked to the group, and that buy and sell mileages were not tallying.
