A SECOND-HAND car trader has been imprisoned for 16 months after selling two vehicles that had tens of thousands of miles wiped off their clocks – and making fun of customers who dared to complain.
Direct Car Sales owner Farman Tayebi, from Putney and with branches in Croydon and New Malden, was jailed at Kingston Crown Court, having earlier admitted winding the cars’ clocks back by 30,000 miles in one instance and more than that on the other.
The court was told he had been having problems selling the Peugeot RCZ and Audi and eventually offloaded them on to unsuspecting customers via the website Auto Trader. In addition, the court was told, cars that he sold would break down days afterwards and would have ‘dangerously unroadworthy’ tyres.
According to the Croydon Guardian, the prosecution said Tayebi had cost customers approximately £25,000. And it reported that when people complained, they would be accused of wasting his time or be laughed at. One witness said he was told by Tayebi that the warranty for his vehicle was ‘just a piece of paper’.
The Croydon Guardian quoted Judge Sarah Plaschkes as telling Tayebi: ‘The practices you deployed were designed to maximise your profits and deny consumers their customer rights. You have shown no remorse for the offences you have committed. The way you carried on your second-hand car business was thoroughly reprehensible.’
In mitigation, Ben Palmer said: ‘This sort of behaviour in the company may well be the behaviour of a company that is failing. It’s symptomatic of financial trouble. This man has been placed under severe stress.’
Tayebi, 44, who frequently used ‘Fabian’ as a false name, was also banned from being a company director for five years and fined £200.
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