Published date: 21 October 2016 |
Published by: Staff reporterRead more articles by Staff reporterEmail reporter
Customs officers kept watch on a vehicle near Wrexham where they believed illegaltobacco was being transferred.
When they moved in to arrest them, they found 352 kilos of hand-rolled tobacco.
A total of £61,000 in duty had not been paid, a court heard yesterday.
Stephen Jones, 59, of Beechley Road in Wrexham, who earlier admitted fraudulently evading duty in July of last year, was jailed for 15 months.
The court heard he had been jailed previously for the same thing.
Two others, Kevin Cauldwell, 46, of Miller’s Field, Morda, Oswestry; and David Evans,43, of Stanley Road, Ponciau, Wrexham, admitted the same charge.
Cauldwell received six-month jail term suspended for a year and Evans received a four-month prison sentence, suspended for a year.
The case against a fourth man, Michael Mullins, 48, of no fixed address, is yet to be dealt with.
Judge Niclas Parry said it was all part of a significant fraud involving “planned, group activity”.
“The profits to be made were clearly enough to justify a pre-planned journey from Chesterfield to North Wales,” he said.
Mullins had been employed as a driver and he was prepared to drive a considerable distance to deliver the contraband.
He refused to name the people who provided him with the tobacco.
The judge said that Jones was “the facilitator” with direct links to the man who supplied the tobacco.
He was not prepared to name that man but it was the same man he had been engaged with criminally in the past and had been imprisoned for the same thing in 2007.
Cauldwell had purchased tobacco to be passed on which had perpetuated the fraud.
Evans was a buyer of so much that it was obvious it would be passed on to others.
“Many thousands of pounds of duty are lost because of this kind of criminality,” he said.
Public services lose out.
“What we are talking about her is more than £61,000 worth of duty lost to the public purse,” said Judge Parry.
Sentences were needed which would deter others. Such offences were easy to commit but involved significant resources to detect, he explained.
Henry Hills, for Jones, said his client had returned from Thailand two days before the offence occurred.
That day he had been contacted by a man he only knew as Wil and the tobacco was delivered.
It was accepted his previous conviction in 2007 aggravated his position.
John Hedgecoe, representing Cauldwell, and Paul Abraham, representing Evans, said their clients had pleaded guilty at a very early stage and deserved credit in sentencing.
The offences occurred 15 months ago and there had been no repetition.
Prosecuting barrister Robert Edwards told the court on July 8 last year customs officials were keeping observations at a service station near Rhostyllen.
A white van arrived driven by Mullins, he chatted to Jones, and Evans and Cauldwell were seen to arrive in a taxi.
At 4.45pm, the officers maintaining observations believed that a transaction was about to take place and moved in to arrest them.
In the back of the van were more than 330 kilos of rolling tobacco on which the duty had not been paid.
http://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/168222/wrexham-man-jailed-after-illegal-tobacco-gang-were-caught-red-handed.aspx
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