eBay golf bar conman Gary Bellchambers locked up for 4 years

Adam Fresco, Crime Correspondent & , : {}

The head of a tellurian crime network that hoodwinked eBay business in to shopping feign branded golf clubs was locked up yesterday.

Gary Bellchambers, 46, oversaw a network offered golfing accessories, wardrobe and passes for an airline loll on a scale that, it is believed, has never been seen before, Snaresbrook Crown Court was told. Over 4 years the squad was obliged for the sale and placement of hundreds of thousands, may be millions of pounds value of tawdry products both in the UK and abroad, utilizing the auction website. Investigators found that scarcely all the tip brands together with TaylorMade, Odyssey and Callaway were copied in the singular largest counterfeiting swindling nonetheless unclosed on eBay.

The phoney clubs were constructed in Shenzen, China, and Bellchamberss bank statements suggested that he had done a money withdrawal from an ATM in the southern Chinese city.

Adam Davis, for the prosecution, pronounced that the swindling was of a indeed tellurian nature. Conspirators are thought to have been formed in Thailand, Australia, Germany, Singapore, the US, Hong Kong, China and products have been distributed from, or to, all those countries and more, he said. Conspirators were found in Wales, the Republic of Ireland, Aberdeen, Dorset and Birmingham.

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Bellchambers was locked up for 4 years and 3 months; Keith Thomas, 49, his UK-based book-keeper, for sixteen months; and Roy Cottee, 66, a pensioner, for twelve months. Other members of the squad were since dangling sentences.

Judge Jacqueline Beech said: This was a rarely worldly and essential operation. When a golfer purchases a bar temperament a code name or trademark, they are profitable for years of investigate and growth and for a golf bar that represents the slicing corner of sports apparatus technology. The expectancy is that the clubs will assistance them urge their diversion and positively not have it worse.

Bellchambers outlayed time in Thailand, and between expats was seen as a successful general businessman, owning houses there, a piece share in a yacht, a grill in Australia and shares in most companies.

At home in Rainham, Essex, he lived in an ex-council residence and gathering an old Ford Escort, to equivocate the courtesy of the authorities. They were alerted when a lady complained to trade standards officers after perplexing to get a reinstate on dual golf clubs and carrying her letters ignored.

Cottees wife, Kay, 46, Bellchamberss sister Sharon Williams, 49, Helen Wilson, 29, a childminder, and Chris Moughton, 56, unemployed, were all since dangling sentences for their purposes in the conspiracy.

Williams, Wilson and the Cottees were all convicted of impasse after an 11-week trial. Bellchambers, Thomas and Moughton all confessed their guilt.

Expressing compensation that the squad had got what they deserved, Bill Adams, Havering councils principal trade standards officer, said: Ive been an questioner for 35 years and never listened of such a large counterfeiting operation.A mouthpiece pronounced that eBay were gratified with the sentences; the squad used a network of criminals to open and say eBay accounts utilizing fake documentation, bank, credit label and hit details.

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