Fake planning agent who tricked householders is jailed over fraud
A Wolverhampton trickster who pocketed more than £2,000 with a racket conning people into thinking he could get planning permission for their home improvements has been jailed for 14 months.
Harjit Singh Marwaha – given a suspended prison sentence for similar offences three years ago – used a fake receipt to con an elderly man into paying £1,000 for plans for a proposed extension that were never submitted, Stoke Crown Court heard.
The 34-year-old cowboy planning agent from Bee Lane, Fordhouses, duped another homeowner with worthless documents that omitted vital details needed for a successful planning application.
Mr David Abel, prosecuting on behalf of Wolverhampton Council, told city magistrates at an earlier hearing of the case: "The defendant seems to have targeted elderly people in the Asian community. He gave one man a receipt that led the person to believe the application was progressing. In fact the plans had not been submitted and were never submitted."
Wolverhampton City Trading Standards officials were alerted after complaints in March and July last year from residents in Orton Grove, Penn, and Windsor Road, Parkfields that proposed extensions never got off the ground after paying the corrupt 'planning agent.'
Marwaha, whose behaviour broke the terms of the previous suspended sentence, admitted fraud by false representation and engaging in a misleading commercial practice and was jailed for 56 weeks.
His latest court appearance comes three years after he was given an eight-month suspended prison sentence and ordered to pay almost £8,000 for producing fake paperwork wrongly stating he had received planning permission for four bungalows.
On that occasion he lied to the developer dealing with the land in Genge Avenue, Parkfields, and a man who wanted to extend his home in Cranbourne Avenue, Lanesfield.
Another customer demolished their garage so that work could begin on a two-storey extension for which he had paid the defendant £500 for planning advice when council officials would have told him for free that the development was a non starter. Wolverhampton Councillor Steve Evans, Cabinet Member for City Environment, said: "The council takes consumer protection very seriously. The unscrupulous should not be under any illusion; if you are perpetrating acts of fraud then you will be caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law."
