Fuel-fiddling driver narrowly escapes jail
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• Long distance lorry driver John Flynn narrowly escaped jail this week after he admitted his part in a diesel fraud scheme set up by two garage cashiers.
Flynn pleaded guilty to seven charges of false accounting and 15 similar offences against his employers, Cotts Transport Services of Camberwell, South London.
The prosecution said Flynn, of Bromley, Kent, used his employer's agency card to buy diesel fuel for his van from S G Smiths garage in Bromley.
Far more was bought than the vehicle could take and the difference in cash was taken from the till.
After two months the garage company director noticed irregularities on payment slips and uncovered the fraud. The two cashiers fled before the police arrived. After his capture Flynn confessed, saying the cashiers hal suggested the scheme. "I got tenner for every one I did," tu told police. Michael Gledhill, defending, said his client had simply signed the form after it was filled out by the cashiers.
"If he thought about it he would have known he was bound to be caught," said Gledhill.
"When spot checks were done it was soon realised they were selling far more diesel than was going from the tanks," he said. "These two cashiers disappeared without trace and are no doubt workin in another garage, milking another firm, leaving Flynn holding the baby."
Flynn made £200 and his employers lost £961. He is now unemployed and was sent enced to six months jail, suspended for two years. • A lorry driver has launched a one-man crusade to persuade truckers and other road users to drive more carefully.
Terry McCaffrey, who has driven for curtain rail manufacturer Antiference for 14 years, says he was inspired by the Department of Transport's Don't Get Dead close campaign. Now he wants to take it further, giving out stickers at truckstops and enlisting the support of truckers' clubs and haulage associations.
He is a producing his own stickers, helped by a customer, with the slogan I'm not slow, I'm legal which he wants approved by police and DTp. He is calling on other drivers to come up with new ideas to encourage safer driving.