A DEWSBURY man has been given a suspended jail sentence for a major motoring fraud.

Ibrar Hussain ran a company which offered car spares over the internet but never made deliveries. Now Hussain, the owner of Universal Autosalvage Ltd, has been sentenced to a 12 months imprisonment suspended for two years. He was also given a 300 hours’ community service order and requested to pay compensation back to 11 victims, after pleading guilty to 12 counts of fraud at Leeds Crown Court.

Hussain was company secretary for the business, trading from Firths Yard, Mill Lane, Dewsbury. His brother Jabbar Hussain was the director of the company.

The court was told of Ibrar Hussain’s previous convictions for fraud and that his brother Jabbar Hussain acted as the director of the company for Ibrar, as he would have been unable to act as director due to his previous convictions.

The fraud was exposed in September, 2009, when officers from West Yorkshire Trading Standards Service were alerted to high complaint levels against the company that had been reported to Consumer Direct – the national complaints helpline.

The complaints were all of the same nature in that customers had ordered car parts from the company via third party parts broker websites and the goods were never received.

In total 60 complaints were reported to Consumer Direct about Universal Autosalvage Ltd and further complaints reported to West Yorkshire Police.

West Yorkshire Police investigated the company and Ibrar Hussain was duly arrested and charged for offences under the Fraud Act 2006. Twenty-five disgruntled consumers took their cases to the Small Claims Court, and now Universal Autosalvage Ltd has 25 County Court judgements registered against them.