10:57 am, October 30, 2013
A USED car dealer has been jailed for three years and ordered to repay a sum of £390,000, after shaving six million miles off used vehicles and forging service history documents.
Adil Hussain, from Lenton in Nottinghamshire, made more than £100,000 by tricking his customers online and turning back the cars’ odometers before selling them at premium prices.
According to the Daily Mail, Nottingham Crown Court heard that Hussain bought cars from auctions and private sellers before fiddling with the mileage and reselling them on a used car classified site. He pocketed up to £133,200 by selling 74 ‘clocked’ cars online.
Hussain was reported to the Trading Standards after one woman realised she had been conned into spending thousands of pounds. Hairdresser, Caroline Jones, ended up paying £3,000 to repair a fraudulent vehicle, after trading in her Honda S2000 for a Toyota Celica.
She told the newspaper: ‘I was forced to downsize my car to save money because the recession really hit my business.
‘I looked on Auto Trader and Adil Hussain was advertising himself as a car dealer. I saw he was advertising a 2005 Toyota Celica with 48,431 miles on the clock for £6,000. He offered me £4,000 for my car so I paid him £2,000 cash.
‘I went to look at the car and he provided all the documents and service history which tallied with the mileage of this car.
‘We agreed a price and he dropped the car off but almost immediately after I handed over the money I realised something was wrong because the car wouldn’t start.
‘The gearbox was completely shot and when I held up the service book to the light I noticed a sticker was covering the front which said Toyota Diesel. Everything clicked and I realised he had given me the service book from another car. I could just see him driving away in my car and tried to ring him on his mobile but it was already disconnected.’
She added: ‘The car I bought from him had actually done 100,000 miles and the rear wheel was hanging on by a single bolt. It could have killed me.
‘Because I needed a car for my business I ended up paying £3,000 to have it repaired before I just sold it for a banger because the memory of what he did was too much for me.’
Judge Andrew Hamilton said: ‘You effectively stole from your victims. Because of the high mileage the cars had travelled they could be potentially dangerous.’
Hussain was jailed for three years for fraud and ordered to pay £390,000 – the value of the cars he ‘clocked’ – while his cousin, Ayaz Aziz, 27, received a 14-month prison sentence suspended for two years, and was also ordered to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work.
