Former Padarn Bus MD John Hulme has been ordered to pay Gwynedd County Council (GCC) £42,894 at a proceeds of crime hearing at Caernarfon Crown Court.
It follows a concessionary travel fraud committed by Mr Hulme and former Operations Director Darren Price. Mr Price was ordered to pay GCC £61,000 compensation (routeONE, News, 1 February).
After the offences were discovered Llanberis-based Padarn Bus went into liquidation in May 2014, with £2.379m debt and the loss of 84 jobs.
The prosecution said Mr Hulme’s benefit from the scam was £87,683 and £42,894 was available comprising cash deposits, shares, his home and car.
Judge Huw Rees said Mr Hulme would serve eight months in prison in default of payment. Mr Hulme will be entitled to come back to court for the amount to be adjusted should there be difficulty selling the house or car.
At a previous hearing, the two were jailed and disqualified from being company directors for six years, for making inflated claims about concessionary passenger numbers and falsifying supporting documents.
Mr Price, who pleaded guilty to false accounting making false claims for £495,877, was sentenced to two years, three months in jail. At a proceeds of crime hearing he was ordered to pay GCC £61,000 (routeONE, News, 1 February).
Mr Hulme, who initially pleaded not guilty to fraud and false accounting, was convicted by a jury and was sentenced to six years jail (routeONE, News, 23 March 2016).
Separately, after a four-day trial at Caernarfon Crown Court in September 2015, Mr Hulme was found guilty of nine charges of downloading and possessing more than 15,000 indecent images of children, as young as three years old. He pleaded not guilty and claimed they had been planted.
He was jailed for two years and three months, to be served consecutively to the six-year sentence for fraud.
