Fined for plates switch
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• The use of unregistered vehicles and the switching of registration plates led to associated companies H & L Garages and Turbolink, along with Turbolink's manager being ordered to pay fines and costs of £5,200.
Mercedes agent H & L Garages of South Killingholme admitted before Lincoln City Magistrates two offences of making a false declaration to obtain an excise licence, two offences of making false registration plates and 18 offences of fraudulently allowing Turbolink to use registration marks.
H & L was fined a total of £1,400 and ordered to pay prosecution costs of £300. Turbolink, formed to handle H & L's leasing business, admitted 18 offences of fraudulently allowing John Butcher, trading as Lincoln Transport Service, to use registration marks and 18 offences of keeping vehicles on the road without excise licences. Turbolink was fined a total of £2,200. Peter Haley admitted four offences of making a false declaration to obtain excise licences and 18 offences of aiding and abetting Turbolink to fraudulently allow Butcher to use registration marks. He was fined a total of 21,300.
Prosecuting, Stephen Baggott said it had been a clever little fraud. Two new Mer cedes tractive units were hired to Butcher in July 1986 bearing C registration plates. When he asked why they were not displaying excise licence discs he was told they were expected any day. He went on holiday and on his return he found the vehicles were displaying D registration plates. While he was on holiday the vehicles had returned to Turbolink for servicing and new registration plates had been put on them.
The vehicles had been taxed from 1 August. Butcher had paid a leasing charge that included an allowance for vehicle excise duty, and he innocently used the vehicle on the road during July.
The potential loss to the Revenue of £418.16 had since been made good, said Baggott, but the defendant had gained a great advantage in converting C-registered vehicles into Dregistered vehicles as they would be worth more at the end of the hire period.
Defending, Peter Ader said they were talking about only two vehicles for one month. It was an isolated incident and put in context, H & L had registered 350 vehicles in August so they were talking about less than 1%. The hire period was three years and it might well have been renewed. The difference between years of registration diminished over a period of time so there was not an enormous amount of money to be made out of the fraud. Haley had gained nothing and had merely followed the instrutions of his managing director. All three defendants had•a previously unblemished record.