TWO employees of a Staple Hill garage who carried out a “dangerous MOT fraud” have been given suspended prison sentences.
Owain Shaw and Jamie Lee have also been ordered to carry out unpaid community work after issuing MOT certificates for 223 “potentially unsafe vehicles” that had never been brought to the business they worked for.
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency said Shaw, an MOT tester at Staple Hill MOT Centre in Broad Street, and Lee, who worked at the garage as a mechanic, set up a system to avoid carrying out MOTs.
A spokesperson said: “Lee would send Shaw vehicle registration numbers. Shaw would then issue pass certificates without ever seeing the vehicles.
“This type of fraud is called ‘ghost’ MOT testing. The vehicles being ‘tested’ are not actually there – like ghosts.”
DVSA investigators externally monitoring the garage’s MOT system in September 2023 detected Shaw issuing an MOT certificate in less than a minute.
The DVLA said: “The vehicle he was supposed to be testing was nowhere to be seen at the MOT centre.
“Further investigation revealed suspicious patterns. Multiple MOT tests were being completed in unrealistically short time periods. This raised immediate red flags for DVSA.”
Bank records showed Lee had paid Shaw £11,428 for issuing fake certificates – payments they tried to disguise as purchases of ‘car parts’.
The DVSA said the fraudulent certificates were immediately cancelled once the scam was uncovered, with the vehicle owners contacted.
Shaw admitted 44 counts of fraud at Bristol Crown Court in January, 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.
Both men face having their assets seized as proceeds of crime at a later court hearing.
MOTs test brakes, lights, tyres, steering and other vital parts for potentially dangerous defects.
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.
Abigail Ollis, one of the directors of the family-run garage, told the Voice the two men had breached the trust of both the business, which had paid for their training, and its customers.
She said Shaw had issued the MOT certificates via a mobile phone at home.
Ms Ollis said: “The judge agreed we weren’t at fault but the garage is being tarnished – it’s obviously having a knock-on effect.”
She said the situation had caused so much stress that the garage’s other director had suffered a heart attack – and they had had to wait almost three years before the case could be brought to court.
The business issued a statement which said Shaw and Lee’s actions “were completely at odds with the standards and values we have upheld for decades”, adding: “We have since carried out a full review of our procedures and strengthened our compliance systems to ensure this cannot happen again.”