brucemillar
MB Enthusiast
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** Couple’s elaborate plan to get out of £25 parking fine that ended up costing them their cars **
A couple who came up with an elaborate plan to get out of paying a £25 parking ticket ended up losing both their cars.
The whole thing is quite a saga – so get comfortable.
It all started because Rebecca Jacques, 20, and Gavin Price, 33, both had silver Vauxhaull Corsas which looked very similar.
However, Jacques’ car had a ‘black box recorder’ that measured mileage and how well the car was driven. If she went over a set amount of mileage, her insurance would go up in price.
When she changed jobs, she needed to drive a lot more – but didn’t want to pay the increased insurance.
So she and her boyfriend Price decided to put the number plates from her car onto his, so it would look like she was driving her own car but the ‘black box’ wouldn’t record it. (We don’t know why she couldn’t just borrow his car.)
After getting away with it for a while, things went wrong when Price’s car (the one with the wrong plates) got a parking ticket at St Mary’s car park in Swansea city centre last August.
Jacques received a fine notice, as her number plates were on the Corsa. But she didn’t want to pay the fine, so emailed Swansea Council saying signs in the car park gave the impression that paying a £4 fee would allow parking for a whole day not just part of it.
But the appeal was dismissed.
At this point, she could still have paid the fine and carried on. But she contacted the local authority again, saying the car must have been ‘cloned’. (That means when criminals copy a licence plate and put it on an unconnected car so that driver gets any fines).
but the council said if they suspected cloning, the couple, both from Llandarcy in Neath, should tell the police.
So they did. In December last year, officers came to their home. When they investigated they realised what was going on.
Both of them admitted fraud by attaching the wrong registration plates, and had their cars confiscated and ‘disposed of’.
Judge Heywood said: ‘What’s staggering about these offences is that they arise from a parking fine you were given. It’s clear you tried to evade the fine with a **** and bull story.’
He said the only reason he didn’t impose immediate custody was because Jacques had previous good character and he did not want to deprive the community of a dedicated care worker.
He added Price, although the older of the two, was not ‘the prime mover’.
James Hartson, defending Jacques, said she tried to avoid the fine because of her financial circumstances.
Jacques separately admitted trying to pervert the course of justice by telling the council her car index plates had been cloned and she also pleaded guilty alone to driving without valid insurance.
She received a six-month jail term suspended for 12 months, was disqualified from driving for a month, and ordered to do 80 hours unpaid work.
Price was given a two-month prison sentence suspended for 12 months and ordered to do rehabilitation activities and to go on a thinking skills programme.
A couple who came up with an elaborate plan to get out of paying a £25 parking ticket ended up losing both their cars.
The whole thing is quite a saga – so get comfortable.
It all started because Rebecca Jacques, 20, and Gavin Price, 33, both had silver Vauxhaull Corsas which looked very similar.
However, Jacques’ car had a ‘black box recorder’ that measured mileage and how well the car was driven. If she went over a set amount of mileage, her insurance would go up in price.
When she changed jobs, she needed to drive a lot more – but didn’t want to pay the increased insurance.
So she and her boyfriend Price decided to put the number plates from her car onto his, so it would look like she was driving her own car but the ‘black box’ wouldn’t record it. (We don’t know why she couldn’t just borrow his car.)
After getting away with it for a while, things went wrong when Price’s car (the one with the wrong plates) got a parking ticket at St Mary’s car park in Swansea city centre last August.
Jacques received a fine notice, as her number plates were on the Corsa. But she didn’t want to pay the fine, so emailed Swansea Council saying signs in the car park gave the impression that paying a £4 fee would allow parking for a whole day not just part of it.
But the appeal was dismissed.
At this point, she could still have paid the fine and carried on. But she contacted the local authority again, saying the car must have been ‘cloned’. (That means when criminals copy a licence plate and put it on an unconnected car so that driver gets any fines).
but the council said if they suspected cloning, the couple, both from Llandarcy in Neath, should tell the police.
So they did. In December last year, officers came to their home. When they investigated they realised what was going on.
Both of them admitted fraud by attaching the wrong registration plates, and had their cars confiscated and ‘disposed of’.
Judge Heywood said: ‘What’s staggering about these offences is that they arise from a parking fine you were given. It’s clear you tried to evade the fine with a **** and bull story.’
He said the only reason he didn’t impose immediate custody was because Jacques had previous good character and he did not want to deprive the community of a dedicated care worker.
He added Price, although the older of the two, was not ‘the prime mover’.
James Hartson, defending Jacques, said she tried to avoid the fine because of her financial circumstances.
Jacques separately admitted trying to pervert the course of justice by telling the council her car index plates had been cloned and she also pleaded guilty alone to driving without valid insurance.
She received a six-month jail term suspended for 12 months, was disqualified from driving for a month, and ordered to do 80 hours unpaid work.
Price was given a two-month prison sentence suspended for 12 months and ordered to do rehabilitation activities and to go on a thinking skills programme.
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