Bassetlaw car dealer banned from running businesses after £17,000 fraud conviction

Jason Frost sold Mini Coopers that had ‘already been sold to someone else, and promised parts that never materialised and restoration work that didn’t take place’, said prosecutor Alexander Wolfson.

Nottingham Crown Court heard Frost ran Resto Barn Ltd, on Bulcote Business Park, as a legitimate business which ‘wasn’t fraudulent at the outset’.

But between February 2020 and March 2021 he defrauded three customers – one of them a friend who later said ‘he had lost trust in people as a result’.

Daniel Scothern, mitigating, said Frost ‘didn’t set up his business with the intention of fleecing people out of thousands of pounds’.

But ‘things quickly got out of hand’ when he was left in debt to his then girlfirend and unable to cover the cost of outstanding restoration work for other customers.

‘Things snowballed’ and Frost became trapped in a ‘cycle of behaviour’ as his marriage ended and his business was forced to close.

Mr Scothern said Frost was ‘under no illusion about the effect this has had on his clients’ and described him as ‘deeply embarrassed and remorseful’.

He has since refunded £3,000 to other customers but was advised by the police not to contact his victims. He is now working as a service engineer.

“He has three previous convictions for 22 offences dating back to 1999, but nothing since,” said Mr Scothern.

“He is not a career criminal and was leading a stable life before events and his mistakes over took him.”

Frost, 47, formerly of Riverside Approach, Gainsborough, and now of Melton Road, Leicester, pleaded guilty to four offences at a previous hearing.

On Thursday, Judge Nirmal Shant KC, Recorder of Nottingham, told Frost he resorted to fraud after facing ‘financial and domestic difficulties’.

She said he was a regular offender as a young man but has built up a law-abiding life and there is a realistic prospect of his rehabilitation.

He received a six-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was banned from running his own business for five years. Action under the Proceeds of Crime Act was also timetabled.