A fraudster who got his hands on six luxury cars in a high-value swindle made more than £675,000 from crime, a court has ruled.
Alexander Pearson, aka Tahir Rashid, is serving prison sentences for cannabis production, fraud, theft and money laundering.
Now he has been ordered to pay a small fraction of his criminal profits to the state.
A judge largely accepted the “thoroughly dishonest” prisoner’s account in a proceeds of crime hearing.
Pearson, 38, previously of Ingleby Barwick, obtained six luxury cars and 65 laptops via finance agreements he failed to honour in 2009.
He got hold of the goods over a six-month period via an empty shell company of which he was sole director.
He leased or entered hire purchase agreements for four Audi cars from a Teesside dealership, mostly for £44,000 to £49,000 each.
Outside Teesside, he collected a £169,000 Lamborghini Gallardo and a £155,000 Bentley.
He claimed he’d been a multi-millionaire and an investor who made money from steel importation.
He arranged £500,000 in credit and made claims that he had a recruitment company with 241 agents and a £4.9m turnover.
In reality, the firm had no assets, staff or contracts.
He also tried to obtain two Ferraris valued at £178,000 and £169,500, but credit applications were refused.
He failed to maintain payments and ferried five of the vehicles out of the UK. Three were recovered in Northern Cyprus, one in Germany, one in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.
He bought 65 computers on credit for £19,870, using his Teesside landlord’s name, in April 2009. He made no payment.
Tens of thousands of pounds went into Pearson’s account days before the cars were taken out of the UK.
Pearson left the country himself and was jailed for five years for drug offences in Northern Cyprus in 2010.
He was repatriated to serve his sentence in September 2011, and in May 2012 he was jailed for three years and eight months after he admitted seven counts of fraud, six of theft and three of money laundering.
He was back at Teesside Crown Court yesterday, on day release from Kirklevington Grange Prison.
Judge Peter Armstrong ruled he made a total of £675,439 from crime. The prosecution said he had £267,602 available to pay the state in cash and “hidden assets”. Pearson had to prove this was not true. He maintained he had no assets left. He admitted he’d made £427,000 from fraud and drug trafficking. But he said he’d spent it all on expenses like a £227,000 loan to a doomed property development, registering the stolen cars, customs duty, setting up the cannabis crop and household expenses.
He said more than £86,000 was used to repay others, living expenses and gambling.
He said a missing Audi Q7 went to a Turkish national in Northern Cyprus and he received £7,000 from its sale.
Judge Armstrong said fraudsters would wish to keep their profits out of the authorities’ hands, and Pearson had been “thoroughly dishonest” in the past.
But he was “impressed to an extent by his apparent candour” giving evidence.
He did not think Pearson was “deliberately obstructive or obtuse”, and Pearson had produced documents to back up his account. The judge found Pearson had mostly proved his case on the balance of probabilities, except for the Audi. He made a confiscation order for Pearson to pay the Audi’s value - £26,402 - as “hidden assets”. “You’ve got to find £26,402 in six months or you go back to prison for 12 months,” added the judge.
