exeterexpressandecho.co.uk/E … z41NFcUGJO
Exeter truck driving instructor went to Rome while clients fumed at bogus training course.
A trucker who ripped off fellow drivers for training courses has been ordered to pay back the money he took from them.
Mark Johnson told the 14 drivers that the courses he ran would go towards the renewal of their professional qualifications even though he had no way of issuing the necessary certificates.
He told a string of lies after they discovered their work had not been uploaded onto a government data base including telling one driver he was at hospital in Exeter when he was on holiday in Rome.
The former traffic policeman, who is now an HGV driver, was a qualified instructor but failed to pay the necessary fees to a company which could ratify his courses.
This meant some drivers found themselves unable to work because they did not have a document called a Certificate of Professional Competence which is now needed in addition to the normal HGV licence.
Johnson, aged 49, of Gussiford Lane, Exmouth, admitted fraud on the first day of his trial at Exeter Crown Court when the prosecution uncovered evidence that he had been visiting the Vatican when he claimed to be at his sick wife’s bedside in Exeter.
He was ordered to do 240 hours unpaid community work and pay £5,400 compensation by Judge Erik Salomonsen.
He told him:"You failed hard working lorry drivers. You left them high and dry. There was no complaint about your competence but their courses were completely useless because they never got the accreditation.
"When you were pursued and asked what was going on, you avoided the questions. You must have been acutely embarrassed when it became apparent that your account of being at hospital in Exeter was contradicted by phone records which showed you were visiting Vatican City.
HGV drivers now need both a licence and a CPC, which is based on ongoing training. Every trucker has to complete 35 hours of training every five years covering areas such as road safety, first aid and tachograph use.
Johnson organised one three day and one two day training sessions in April and June 2014 for which drivers paid a total of £2,913.
Miss Cassel said drivers had also suffered loss through taking time off work both the attend Johnson’s courses and to retake them later with other instructors.
Two of the drivers found themselves unable to work because their CPCs expired while they were still waiting for Johnson to upload the work they had done with him.
Mr Peter Coombe, defending, said Johnson had not set out to swindle the drivers and believed he could log their training through an agency called CPC4U which he had worked with in the past.
He said the offences happened during a chaotic time in his life when he was dealing with a series of family illnesses.
Mr Coombe said:"He closed his eyes to the difficulties rather than setting out to cheat people. He tried to run genuine courses. It was not dishonest from the inception but there came a time when he should not have been doing it.