City conman is ordered to pay £213,000 of ill-gotten gains

FRAUDSTER CHARGED STUDENTS FOR A NON-EXISTENT COURSE

A LEICESTER conman who tricked students into handing over thousands of pounds for a fake college course will have to pay back £213,000, a court has ruled.

In 2015, Sanketkumar Patel, 38, conned young people from around the world into coming to England to study on the fictitious business course.

His lies left them all at least £4,500 out of pocket and in England illegally – and facing the possibility of deportation.

Patel was sentenced for two money laundering offences in April, but his 21-month prison term was suspended for two years.

Patel has £226,000 in assets, including his home in Edenhall Close, Rushey Mead, Leicester, and now a judge in a Proceeds of Crime Act hearing has ruled that he must pay back £213,000.

This will include compensation to the students, whom he had conned into believing they had paid for a visa and a business studies course at

Prior Park College in Bath. If he does not pay it on time, he will end up behind bars, the court ruled.

The scam was detected by staff at Prior Park College, who alerted Bath and North East Somerset Council’s trading standards department.

After the investigation uncovered the fact the course was fake, some of the students who had come to England found themselves being deported and some had lost as much as £6,500 on course fees.

At Bristol Crown Court last week, Judge Mark Horton decided that Patel had benefitted from the proceeds of crime in the amount of £150,000.

The judge ordered him to pay that amount to the court within three months or to face three-and-a-half years in jail.

He ordered that £6,500 of that money would be paid to one of the victims.

Further amounts were ordered to be paid as court costs to the council.

The court heard Patel’s assets included his home, a house he owned as a landlord and £35,000 which was seized from his business premises.

Judge Horton described the investigation by Bath and North East Somerset Council’s trading standards team as “proficient and dedicated” and said that it had often been delayed and frustrated by the defendant.

As a result the judge also ordered Patel to pay £63,000 in costs to the council.

Tim Ball, of Bath and North East Somerset Council, said: “This was a despicable crime to remove hardearned money from vulnerable people, so I am very pleased that one of the individuals behind the money laundering has been made to compensate for his offences.

“We will not tolerate scams and frauds and our trading standards team work tirelessly to tackle these serious crimes.”