Nelson speed fine fixer jailed for two years (From This Is Lancashire)

Nelson speed fine fixer jailed for two years

12:54pm Thursday 29th July 2010 in

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A SPEEDING ticket ‘fixer’ who helped scores of drivers avoid fines and penalty points has been jailed for two years.

Ex-security guard Wajid Rafique, 33, had assisted motorists caught speeding by claiming fictitious people were behind the wheel by filling in forms to the central ticket office using at least eight real addresses under his control in Nelson and one address in New York.

Motorists were said to have handed over between £100 and £300 each to avoid speeding penalties, although Rafique claimed he provided a free ‘community service’ out of the goodness of his heart.

Burnley Crown Court heard the father-of-two ran the operation between December 2005 and September 2009, until the Lancashire Partnership for Road Safety and the police picked up on the pattern and his crimes caught up with him.

The defendant and the motorists were arrested in police swoops last year following the three-month-long Operation Amethyst.

Unemployed Rafique, of Cobden Street, Nelson, had admitted 43 counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice and five theft charges.

But he claimed in an exclusive interview with the Lancashire Telegraph he had got drivers off the hook 750 times.

Sentencing, Judge Jonathan Gibson said speeding was a crime because of the injury and damage that can be caused, particularly in built up areas.

He told the defendant: “You were the main offender. If this can be viewed as a wheel you were at the hub and everyone else was at the end of the spokes.”

The defendant was also banned from driving for a year. Stuart Nolan, defending, said he expressed remorse, had been frank with the authorities and would spend his time in jail reflecting on his crimes.