11:05 am, June 8, 2026
A ‘greedy’ DVLA employee has been jailed along with two corrupt car dealers after the trio teamed up to ‘manipulate and falsify’ documents.
Dodgy dealers Joshua Sawyer and Ashley Harris paid the DVLA’s Matthew Holloway £23,000 to change the records of high-end vehicles that had been written-off or stolen.
Holloway deleted the accident records and keeper histories of several luxury vehicles, which were later sold by Sawyer and Harris for a combined £1.3m.
The trio, all from Swansea, admitted conspiracy to commit fraud and were sentenced at Swansea Crown Court last week.
The court heard how Holloway abused his position at the DVLA’s Swansea headquarters to alter official records relating to a range of vehicles, including prestige cars, motorcycles and quad bikes.
In some cases, vehicles which had previously been declared total losses were effectively given a clean history, allowing them to be sold for sky-high prices.
Among the vehicles affected was a Ferrari 458 Italia which had previously been written off in Australia, as well as two BMW M Competition models.
The MailOnline reports that Ferrari was eventually sold for £115,000, while the BMW’s had around £9,000 added to each of their values.
The court also heard that Sawyer ran his own dealership – Jaax Autos – while Harris worked as part of ‘a number of enterprises or companies’.
After hearing all the evidence Judge Huw Rees said that the trio had carried out an ‘organised operation which undermined confidence in the UK’s vehicle registration system’.
Holloway was sentenced to five years and three months in prison, while Sawyer, 32, got two years and four months. Elsewhere, Harris, 44 – who had a previous conviction for a similar offence in 2017 – was jailed for two years and eight months.
Following the case, Lisa McCarthy of the Crown Prosecution Service said: ‘The evidence revealed an organised effort to alter vehicle documentation, including changing records to conceal the true status and history of vehicles.
‘Holloway held a trusted position within the DVLA and exploited that role, as did Harris and Sawyer, for financial benefit.
‘Their offending risked corrupting the UK’s vehicle registration system, which the public, motor trade and law enforcement depend on for accurate information.’
A DVLA spokesman added: ‘This was a serious breach of trust by a former employee, who was dismissed immediately once the fraud was identified.
‘Since then, we have strengthened our internal controls to help prevent this type of activity and we continue to work closely with the police and partners to tackle vehicle fraud and protect the integrity of our records.’
