A former bus company boss has been found guilty of a £500,000 fraud.
Former Padarn Bus Ltd's managing director David John Hulme was on trial for sending off vastly inflated claims to Gwynedd Counci between July 2011 and December 2012 in a bid to be reimbursed for concessionary fares.
The 55-year-old, of Glan Seiont, Caernarfon had denied one charge of fraud and another of false accounting.
But today the jury took less than three hours to find him guilty of both charges at the end of a trial which started a week ago.
Before the jury retired, Judge Merfyn Hughes told the court today that a "very substantial fraud” had gone on at the firm.
In his summing up, the judge told the jury that Padarn Bus Ltd was formed on April 7, 2009 with the merger of two bus companies - KMP, where the defendant was manager - and Padarn Bus Llanberis, operated by father and son Dafydd and Darren Price.
He said: “The total sum of the fraud between July 2011 and September 2012 when the defendant left his job because of an unrelated matter is £495,857.
However the fraud continued between January 2013 and Feb 2014 and amounted to £318,798 - a swindle which Darren Price has already admitted responsibility for.
At the start of the trial, the jury heard how Hulme was alleged to have doctored automatic passenger reports gathered from the company’s buses.
The court also heard evidence from Padarn Bus Ltd's former general administrator Anne Louise Price - also Darren Price's sister - who said Hulme had instructed her to alter dates on the some claim forms.
However, in closing speeches last week, defending barrister Matthew Curtis had said the jury could not rely on Miss Price's evidence and the prosecution had been unable to prove the defendant's role in the fraud.
see-http://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/gwynedd-bus-firm-boss-found-11073508
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