{"id":67410,"date":"2025-10-08T14:15:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T13:15:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/?p=67410"},"modified":"2025-10-08T14:16:51","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T13:16:51","slug":"former-company-director-jailed-for-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/former-company-director-jailed-for-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Former company director jailed for fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An \u2018arrogant and greedy\u2019 former director of a company that supplied mobility aids and furniture to the elderly and vulnerable has been jailed for 15 months after being prosecuted for fraud.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a case brought by the Heart of the South West Trading Standards Service, Peter Kitson, 64, of Elizabeth Close Henley On Thames, was also banned from being a director of a company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Exeter Crown Court on Tuesday October 7 Kitson, the former director of the Mobility Furniture Company Ltd, pleaded guilty to falsely claiming that goods were subject to a sales discount, making misleading claims that customers would not be placed under pressure to purchase goods, and for falsely claiming that goods were \u2018bespoke\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By falsely claiming that a product was made to order when it was in fact \u2018off the shelf\u2019 it meant that that customers were unable to cancel their orders when they did not receive what they had paid for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court heard Kitson was the director of a nationwide company with a \u00a330m turnover that retailed mobility aids such as adjustable chairs and beds to customers in their own homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company employed 15 salespeople who were paid commission based on the selling price and stood to make a significant financial gain from overcharging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under Kitson the company used the offer of a perpetual seasonal sale to fool customers into acting quickly to make overpriced purchases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kitson admitted at interview that the sales in 2015 were not genuine. and that the company falsely claimed they would not use cold calling or high pressure selling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, one customer told trading standards that they were cold called 88 times in a year despite saying they were not interested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victims reported that they were subjected to high pressure lengthy demonstrations which included the use of banned practices such as time limited offers and refusing to leave the customers homes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The defendant operated an annual competition rewarding his staff for falsely selling items of furniture held in stock as bespoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was despite comprehensive advice from North Somerset Council on the use of these practices both in his capacity as the director of the Mobility Furniture Company and prior to that as the director of Great British Mobility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court heard that the defendant had signed an Undertaking under the Enterprise Act against the use of the use of such practices – yet he continued to ignore Trading Standards advice and continued his illegal sales practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Judge Climie reached an immediate conclusion without adjourning for consideration and called the company under Kitson\u2019s management as one of \u2018greed and torture\u2019 and his actions had had a \u2018devastating life-changing impact\u2019 on some of his victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blame, he said, fell on Kitson\u2019s shoulders as director and acknowledged that Kitson had previously admitted to the probation officer that he was \u2018arrogant and greedy.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In mitigation Judge Climie accepted testimonials from the defendants\u2019 friends and family and reduced the sentence from the maximum of 2 years to 15 months.<\/p>\n\n\n

\r\n\t
\r\n

Alex Fry, Operations Manager for Heart of the South West Trading Standards said: <\/p><\/div>\r\n \t\t

\u201cThis was a large scale, long running investigation and we are pleased that it has reached the successful conclusion today.\u00a0 The case involved many victims from across the country who were subject to hard sell and misleading tactics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of those victims were elderly or disabled and I would like to thank and pay tribute to those who came forward and supported the case including the families of those who have sadly passed away without a resolution.\u00a0 This conviction stands to demonstrate that we will not tolerate fraudulent trading particularly when it involves consumers who are more likely to be vulnerable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\r\n\t<\/blockquote>\r\n \r\n <\/div>\n\n\n

If consumers have complaints about misleading sales they should contact Citizens Advice Consumer Service on 0808223113.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":859,"featured_media":61514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business-economy-and-skills"],"acf":[],"featured_image":{"ID":61514,"title":"Trading Standards Officers loot van","alt":"Trading Standards officer","description":"","caption":"","url":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-scaled.jpg","width":2560,"height":1514,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-400x270.jpg","thumbnail_width":400,"thumbnail_height":270,"medium":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-600x355.jpg","medium_width":600,"medium_height":355,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-768x454.jpg","medium_large_width":768,"medium_large_height":454,"large":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-800x473.jpg","large_width":800,"large_height":473,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-1536x909.jpg","1536x1536_width":1536,"1536x1536_height":909,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-2048x1211.jpg","2048x2048_width":2048,"2048x2048_height":1211,"thumbnail_featured":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-770x450.jpg","thumbnail_featured_width":770,"thumbnail_featured_height":450,"thumbnail_sidebar":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-200x135.jpg","thumbnail_sidebar_width":200,"thumbnail_sidebar_height":135,"banner-block":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-scaled.jpg","banner-block_width":440,"banner-block_height":260,"small-banner":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-scaled.jpg","small-banner_width":640,"small-banner_height":379,"medium-banner":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-scaled.jpg","medium-banner_width":1024,"medium-banner_height":606,"small-thumb":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-scaled.jpg","small-thumb_width":640,"small-thumb_height":379,"medium-thumb":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-scaled.jpg","medium-thumb_width":320,"medium-thumb_height":189,"large-thumb":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-scaled.jpg","large-thumb_width":420,"large-thumb_height":248,"slideshow-preview":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-scaled.jpg","slideshow-preview_width":300,"slideshow-preview_height":177,"slideshow":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/146\/2023\/10\/Trading-Standards-Officers-loot-van-scaled.jpg","slideshow_width":800,"slideshow_height":473}},"category_priority":false,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2027-10-08 13:12:15","action":"delete","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/859"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67414,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67410\/revisions\/67414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devon.gov.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}