A "FRIENDLY and helpful" salesman from Fife has been jailed after clocking the mileage on cars and then selling them online.
Rogue trader Joseph Lowther, 37, advertised the cars on sales website Gumtree, offering them at extremely competitive prices.
However buyer raised a number of complaints about the conman to Fife Trading Standards, which later led to a large-scale police investigation.
He was sentenced this week at Dunfermline Sheriff Court to 215 days.
Trading Standards Service Manager Dawn Adamson said that clocking the mileage of cars with the intent to sell is a criminal activity.
She said: "Unscrupulous car dealers can make big profits from buying cheap, high mileage vehicles then clocking them before reselling them.
"A clocked car will show a lower mileage than the vehicle has actually travelled but it will have the wear and tear of the high mileage vehicle that it truly is, which could lead to potentially unsafe vehicles being on the road.
"Not only will a buyer have paid over the odds for the car, but the vehicle may require expensive repairs.
"The buyer is also likely to lose out should they try to trade in a clocked car. Reputable car dealers are highly unlikely to accept a trade-in they believe to be clocked.
"Put simply, rogue traders who are involved in car clocking are only interested in taking people’s money and have a complete disregard for consumers’ statutory rights."
Detective Inspector Stewart Andrew of Fife Divisional Pro-Active Team said: “At face value Joseph Lowther presented himself as the friendly helpful salesman offering vehicles at extremely competitive rates.
"In reality he is a conman who put lives at risk by selling vehicles which were not roadworthy.
"His scheme not only affected customers who lost life-changing amounts of money but also had a detrimental effect on legitimate local businesses."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here