Fake bus trips fraudster must pay £80,000:
FORMER EXPRESS MOTORS BOSS ‘MADE £386K FROM SCAM’
AFAKE bus journey fraudster has been ordered to pay more than £80,000 compensation to Gwynedd Council.
Former Express Motors director Ian Wyn Jones has three months to pay back more than £300,000 of criminally acquired profit or face more jail time and a judge has ruled the local authority should get a share of that cash.
Caernarfon Crown Court heard applications under the Proceeds of Crime Act last Monday and Tuesday.
The prosecution have been trying to claw back more than £500,000 which the directors of the former Express Motors bus company, of Penygroes, Caernarfon, made illegally by making up bus journeys and claiming the cash back off Gwynedd Council.
Ian Wyn Jones, 55, Bryn Glaslyn, Carmel Road, Penygroes, had been convicted of committing fraud by false representation at a September 2018 trial and was jailed for seven-and-ahalf years.
On Tuesday, at a Proceeds of Crime hearing in Caernarfon Crown Court, a judge heard that Ian Wyn Jones had made £386,116 from the unlawful enterprise.
But the prosecution said there was an “available amount” of £305,523,25 left which must be repaid within three months otherwise Ian Wyn Jones would face a further three years and three months in custody.
On Tuesday, the same judge His Honour Timothy Petts agreed with a prosecution application for £81,440.18, of the money to be repaid by Ian Wyn Jones, to go to Gwynedd County Council.
The judge said: “Ian Wyn Jones is the one from whom the most amount of money is going to be recovered. It’s wholly appropriate that Gwynedd County Council be refunded.”
The court heard that “the loser is the state” and that the balance of the money will go into “the general pot”.
Last Monday, former Express Motors owner Eric Wyn Jones avoided repaying £35,000 after the court heard he had been declared bankrupt.
Earlier last Tuesday, the court heard that another son, Keith Jones, had benefited by £225,999 from the fraud but that only £3,274.98 was left.
He was given three months to pay the smaller sum or face two months in custody.
Keith Jones, 53, of Stad Caer Berllan, Llanddaniel, had been jailed for six years in 2018.
Express Motors bosses were said to have instructed others to increase the number of concessionary passes swiped, excessively swiping concessionary cards and submitting false concessionary payments scheme claim forms to Gwynedd County Council.
Brothers Kevin and Ian Wyn Jones were found guilty, along with their father Eric and younger brother Keith, of fraud and money laundering in September 2018.