Jail after 'carefully calculated fraud'
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• Two Liverpool men were jailed at Carlisle Crown Court last week for a "carefully calculated fraud". They were George Gerard Conlon, unemployed, of Sparrow Hall Road, Liverpool, and John Matthew Hird, a general dealer of Lark Lane, Liverpool.
Both had pleaded. not guilty to obtaining a lorry by deception from a Workington man.
Mr John Kay, prosecuting, said the man had advertised to buy lorries in a newspaper in West Cumberland. Mr John Fox, who owned a haulage business in Falcon Street, Workington, answered saying he had a lorry for sale for £28130. The men took the lorry after giving Mr Fox a deposit of £100 and promising to pay the balance in seven days. But Mr Fox never got the money and called in the police, said Mr Kay.
Giving evidence, Conlon said they paid the deposit and were hoping to sell the vehicle to pay the balance. But the prospective buyer found there was a hire purchase agreement on the lorry and would not buy it until it was cleared. Conlon added that Mr Fox would not clear the hire purchase until he was paid the balance.
Sentencing Hird to two years in prison, Judge Robert Leech said: "You have been involved in this sort of thing before. You should have learnt your lesson. It was a carefully calculated fraud".
The Judge said that he suspected Conlon was an instrument used by people a good deal cleverer than himself, and sentencing him to 18 months in prison, said: "In a way you are lucky".