9:00 am, January 22, 2024
A dodgy car dealer who swindled people out of thousands of pounds in a long-running campaign of fraud has been jailed for close to 10 years.
Glenn Cooper ran GMB Automotive Limited on the Isle of Man but the outfit was far from a legitimate business.
Despite appearing to be above board, Cooper was actually using the company to orchestrate fraudulent activity to the tune of £860,000.
The BBC reports that the 53-year-old falsely applied for personal loans and failed to hand over cash given to him for car sales.
He also took out several stocking loans on cars he either sold on or never owned.
The conman has now appeared at the Douglas Courthouse where a deemster – the Isle of Man equivalent to a judge – heard how he consigned victims to a ‘life of misery’ with his offending.
The court was told that the defendant committed 21 offences during a two-year campaign that lasted between November 2017 and September 2019.
Using his now-defunct business to scam customers, Cooper took out third-party loans on cars before he sold them on to unsuspecting customers, as well as making similar arrangements on vehicles he never even owned.
He also sold or part-exchanged cars on behalf of customers who then never received the money they were owed.
The defendant even claimed to have assets, including properties and luxury vehicles, totalling £4m in order to illegally secure personal loans of £130,000.
Cooper used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle for himself, which included two large bank transfers to a jewellery firm in 2020.
After hearing all the evidence, deemster Graeme Cook ruled that only a custodial sentence would be ‘appropriate’ for Cooper.
He was sentenced to nine years and 10 months behind bars, during a hearing that took place last Wednesday (Jan 17).
Evidence included a harrowing account from the mother of a disabled child, who asked Cooper to sell her Range Rover in order to fund a new run-around.
The dealer took control of the car in September 2019 but the customer never heard from him again, causing her to fall into a ‘downhill spiral financially’.
In a victim impact statement, she told the court that the offence ‘may have given him a moment of joy, but it gave me a life of suffering’.
Cooper’s offending eventually came to the attention of the authorities when loan company Cherry Godfrey was contacted by a firm in the UK, which had concerns over a McClaren 570GT Coupe.
It turned out the vehicle was subject to a fraudulent loan worth £118,00, sparking a police investigation.
The inquiry eventually uncovered the full extent of Cooper’s crimes, totalling £862,479, and he was arrested in November 2022.
Cooper admitted 21 offences of fraud and theft at a previous court hearing.
