A FORMER vehicle tester who carried out a “dangerous” MOT fraud with a colleague has been ordered to hand over £15,000 by a court.
Owain Shaw and co-defendant Jamie Lee were given suspended prison sentences in January after issuing MOT certificates for 223 “potentially unsafe vehicles” that had never been brought to the business they had worked for, Staple Hill MOT Centre.
They were also ordered to carry out unpaid community work by a judge at Bristol Crown Court.
During the summer they were brought back to court in two separate hearings under the Proceeds of Crime Act, where they were ordered to pay compensation and forfeit any remaining profits from their crimes.
Shaw was found to have made a total of £14,971.71 from his crimes and have assets available totalling £15,000.
He was ordered to pay the garage £494.05 in compensation and hand over the remaining £14,505.95 to the courts; the money will go towards funding policing, courts and community safety initiatives.
Shaw was given three months to pay or face an eight-month prison sentence.
He was also told to pay the £250 costs of the proceedings.
Lee was ordered to pay £500 Compensation to Staple Hill MOT Centre within a year. There was no confiscation or costs order, as he was not found to have any assets.
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency said Shaw, an MOT tester and Lee, who worked at the Broad Street garage as a mechanic, set up a system to avoid carrying out the tests, which are intended to ensure a vehicle’s brakes, lights, tyres, steering and other vital systems are safe.
Lee would send Shaw vehicle registration numbers and Shaw would then issue pass certificates without ever seeing the vehicles, a fraud known as ‘ghost’ MOT testing.
They had carried out the fraud without the knowledge of the garage’s owners, with Shaw issuing the MOT certificates via a mobile phone at his home.
Before they were sentenced, Shaw admitted 44 counts of fraud, with a further 199 offences taken into consideration by the judge. He was given a two-year suspended jail sentence and told to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work.
Lee was given a two-year suspended sentence and told to carry out 250 hours of unpaid work after being found guilty of helping to run the fraudulent operation.
DVSA investigators externally monitoring the garage’s MOT system in September 2023 detected Shaw issuing an MOT certificate in less than a minute, to a vehicle that was “nowhere to be seen at the MOT centre”.
Further investigation showed multiple MOT tests being completed in “unrealistically short time periods”.
The DVSA said the fraudulent certificates were immediately cancelled once the scam was uncovered, with the vehicle owners contacted.
Earlier this year Abigail Ollis, one of the directors of the family-run garage, told the Voice the two men had breached the trust of the business, which had paid for their training, and “tarnished” its reputation.
The DVSA says it is trying out a new system where MOT testers must photograph vehicles during testing and upload the images to its computer systems.