Jail for call centre boss
CLIVE Davies, the Bridgend boss of a Swansea call centre which conned people out of tens of thousands of pounds in an energy bills scam, has been jailed.
THE Bridgend boss of a Swansea call centre which conned people out of tens of thousands of pounds in an energy bills scam has been jailed.
Clive Robert Davies was on a suspended prison sentence at the time and had been banned from running a business – punishment for similar offences.
But days after walking free from court last year he was at it again, running a cold calling operation which sold home energy audits that it claimed would enable people to save money on their utility bills – actions a judge called a “breathtakingly audacious disregard” for the previous court order.
Swansea Crown Court heard that Swansea council’s trading standards department began investigating Green Streak Energy after complaints from customers. In June last year they executed a warrant at an office on Princess Way in the city centre where they found Davies and a team of five people making cold calls.
Lee Reynolds, prosecuting, said the firm was selling energy performance certificates – which typically cost homeowners around £50 – for £298.99, telling buyers the firm could then access grants for things like boilers and cavity wall insulation, as well as getting the purchasers reductions on their energy bills.
Green Streak banked £49,000 from customers in just over three months – but in most cases little or no work was done.
The court heard that following the visit from trading standards officers Davies hurriedly ran £102,400 in refunds through his system – but didn’t have the cash to back it up, meaning the company that handled the transactions, Calexico, incurred the debt.
Davies, aged 43, of Bryntirion Hill, Bryntirion, Bridgend, had previously pleaded guilty to four offences under the Companies Act and to running a business while disqualified from doing so when he appeared in the dock for sentencing.
The court heard Davies had been sentenced to 24 weeks in prison suspended for 24 months and disqualified from being a company director in April last year for similar activities involving a company called Residential Redress Ltd that had been based in Wind Street.
He also has two con- victions for theft by an employee – including one when he worked in a bookmakers and took customers’ money but didn’t place their bets – and one for fraud which involved a company supplying photocopiers.
Robin Rouch, for Davies, said it was accepted that Green Streak was not a fraudulent business from the start, but “degenerated into one that was fraudulent by dint of the mis-selling that was taking place”.
Judge Paul Thomas QC – the same judge who sentenced Davies last year – told the defendant he was “as dishonest an individual as I have ever met”.
He said that within weeks of leaving the court last year with a suspended sentence and ban he was back in business, a course of action the judge described as a “breath- takingly audacious disregard for the court order” which was “getting close to mocking” the order.
For each of the four fraudulent trading offences Davies was sentenced to three years in prison, 12 months for breaking the ban on being a company director and two months for the breach of the suspended sentence, all the sentences to run concurrently, making a total of three years. He will serve half that time in custody.
Speaking after the sentencing Swansea Council’s cabinet member for environment services, Mark Thomas, described Davies’ activities as “unscrupulous” and said the local authority was doing all it could to put companies such as Green Streak out of business.
He said: “What makes this case even more seri- ous was this was not the first time we had taken action against Mr Davies to try to stop his unscrupulous activities.
“People like Mr Davies prey on vulnerable and often elderly people in a bid to con them out of large sums of money. We are doing everything we can to make sure these companies cease to operate.”