Man found guilty of selling recalled bike parts on eBay
‘He claimed he had cleaned up the master cylinders’ Man convicted of flogging recalled master cylinders online
‘It’s vital that dangerous parts are off the roads’
James Read, 48, of Morris Road, Romford, has been given a 10-month suspended sentence for selling recalled brake master cylinders on eBay. He was also ordered to do 200 hours unpaid work and repay £5000 of investigation costs. Read was sentenced at Harrow Crown Court on Wednesday, January 24 after pleading guilty to nine counts of fraud at an earlier hearing. He is the first person to be convicted for fraudulently selling defective parts from a recalled vehicle in the UK.
Between June 2016 and November 2017, Read offered defective Suzuki master brake cylinders on eBay as the seller ‘isabella0107’. Selling them for £60 each, Read netted nearly £6000 from the defective parts. Suzuki GB were alerted when a member of the public saw an advert for the items and recognised them as parts that had been recalled. Suzuki referred the case to the DVSA who worked with eBay to reveal the person behind the ads to be James Read. Read had worked as a parts manager for a bike dealer in Romford, however the investigation found no evidence that he had taken the parts from vehicles that had come into the dealership. He claimed he bought a large number of parts from a breakers that was closing down in 2014. At first Read said he was unaware of the recall, but then went on to say he thought he had remedied the defect by cleaning up the master cylinders.
The recall was the largest ever carried out by Suzuki GB, with nearly 30,000 bikes affected. Read sold the defective brake parts to buyers in the UK, across Europe and even some in Canada. With the assistance of eBay, all the unwitting purchasers have now been contacted.
“DVSA’s priority is to protect everyone from unsafe drivers and vehicles,” said Craig Robinson, DVSA Counter Fraud Investigator. “The safety recall scheme is vital to make sure dangerous parts and vehicles are taken off of Britain’s roads. Ignoring or trying to take advantage of this system puts all road users in danger.”