Conman loses appeal in £100k public cash scam
ABIRMINGHAM businessman who stole almost £100,000 of Government funding for creating a nonexistent forest has lost an appeal.
Pritesh Ladwa, 29, was handed £98,000 by the Forestry Commission to turn a former colliery into a wooded beauty spot.
But prosecutors said that Ladwa, of Church Road, Yardley, didn’t plant a single tree. He was jailed for two years and three months at Birmingham Crown Court in November after being convicted of fraud.
Ladwa described himself on Facebook as a director of several companies, adding that he was an “acerbic aesthete with architectural hair”.
Pictures showed him enjoying Champagne and holding a sign saying: ‘Wine o’clock’.
Other images showed him wearing sunglasses and smiling on a yacht in Hawaii, swimming with a dolphin and posing in front of a waterfall in Iceland.
The fraudster had asked Lord Justice Gross at London’s Criminal Appeal Court to reduce his sentence, claiming he was treated too harshly.
The judge, sitting with Mrs Justice Jefford and Judge David Aubrey QC, heard that Ladwa was handed the cash in 2014. He had promised to transform the Orgreave colliery site, in Waverley, South Yorkshire, into a community forest by planting and maintaining trees.
But when two inspectors went to visit the site, they found it overgrown with “no sign of weed control and no evidence that trees had ever been planted.”
When challenged, Ladwa insisted that vandals must have damaged the plantation and that he had paid workers cash in hand to plant trees.
Lord Justice Gross said: “This was a serious fraud. He had not performed the project. The truth was that he had made either no attempt to do so, or almost no attempt to do so.”
Lawyers for the conman argued that his sentence took insufficient account of his mitigation.
But Lord Justice Gross said: “The guideline was rightly applied by the judge. This was serious dishonesty and he could claim no credit for a guilty plea. We are not attracted to these submissions.”