A man who made more than £70,000 over two-and-half years by illegally selling vehicle service stamps online for owners to falsifying service history has been jailed for 12 months.

Jamie Walker sold ink pads and counterfeit stamps for Ford, Vauxhall, Audi, Skoda, VW, BMW, Mini, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes Benz, Nissan, Renault, Toyota, Bentley, Peugeot and Honda, as well as stamps claiming to be from service centres Kwik Fit and Halfords.

An investigation was launched by Leicester City Council following complaints made by dealers and brands including Ford brand protection and Pendragon plc.

Walker pleaded guilty to three counts of fraudulent trading under the Fraud Act 2006, along with eight counts of infringing the Trade Marks Act 1994 on 15 August at Leicester Crown Court.

Related: MOT tester spared jail despite scamming council out of £37,000

Leicester deputy city mayor responsible for regulatory services, Cllr Piara Singh Clair, said: “Fraudulent activity such as this puts would-be buyers at risk, and falsely makes them believe that the vehicle they are buying has a full service record, when in fact the opposite is the case.

“The work of Trading Standards in this instance has undoubtedly prevented potentially hundreds more consumers being duped.”

“People will be unaware that this type of fraud takes place”

Leicester City Council’s head of business regulation, Nicola Preston, said: “This case took a significant amount of time to investigate and I am pleased to see the sentencing at court.

“Cases like these make it difficult to assess the true extent of the amount of people affected by Walker and his actions.

“Many people will be unaware that this type of fraud takes place so taking action is important to protect consumers both locally and nationally.”

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