8:49 am, October 28, 2013
A USED car dealer has been convicted of ‘tricking potential buyers into purchasing former insurance write-offs’.
Peter Robinson, of The Hurst, Birmingham, is said to have conned his buyers into the scam while running the Midland Ford Centre on Warwick Road, Tyseley, according to the Birmingham Mail.
Robinson and the used car business were found guilty of five charges following a trial at Birmingham Crown Court, for misleading customers by omitting the VCAR explanation – VCAR stands for Vehicle Condition Alert Register, meaning there has been an insurance claim against the car – from vehicle adverts.
Mark Jackson, prosecuting, said buyers were blinded by details of a car’s features. The court heard that an advert for a Volkswagen Golf did mention VCAR, but failed to explicitly state that it was an insurance write-off.
According to the Birmingham Mail, one customer named Alfred Martin paid £2,850 for a Ford Fiesta for his wife, but it was only when the DVLA wrote to her that they realised the Fiesta was in fact an accident-damaged vehicle.
Prosecutor, Mark Jackson, said: ‘Mr Martin is in absolutely no doubt if he had been made aware of the fact the vehicle he purchased had been accident damaged and was an insurance write-off, not only would he not have bought it, he wouldn’t have bothered going to look.’
Robinson’s son, Curtis Robinson, was found not guilty of the same five charges, while he and the company were also found not guilty of a charge of fraud, in which he was accused of telling Martin a car had no accident history.
Defending Robinson, Oliver Grimwood claimed there was no evidence of a customer being misled by vehicle adverts: ‘If the whole purpose of getting a car on the cheap, doing it up cheaper than an insurance company, if actually what the Crown say is true, you’re not going to tell customers this, then why don’t you flog them at the normal price?’
Robinson will be sentenced on November 15.
