The owner of a Thurcaston car garage has been sentenced to three years in prison for selling unsafe vehicles to customers.
Lee Irons, 34, owner of Affordable Cars Thurcaston in Leicestershire, was found guilty of 14 counts of fraud following a trial at Leicester Crown Court, sitting at Loughborough Magistrates’ Court. The charges relate to the sale of faulty cars between March 2021 and September 2022.
Leicestershire County Council’s trading standards team investigated Affordable Cars Thurcaston after receiving multiple complaints from customers who experienced problems with their recently purchased vehicles, which were not resolved by Irons. The investigation revealed that some of the cars were sold with false service histories and MOT certificates.
Trading standards officers received complaints from 12 customers. One customer returned her vehicle the day after purchase but did not receive a refund, and the car was subsequently resold by Irons. Examinations of the vehicles sold by Irons revealed that they were unsafe or unroadworthy. During a visit to the premises in Thurcaston, officers also discovered several unsafe vehicles being advertised for sale.
In addition to the three-year sentence, Irons received an extra four months imprisonment to run consecutively for offences committed during a suspended prison sentence from a previous trading standards prosecution for similar offences in November 2020.
Gary Connors, head of regulatory services at Leicestershire County Council, described Irons’s behaviour as “shameless and dishonest.”
anthony roe
not long enough when you consider that he ould have killed somebody