A notorious TV repair conman from Birmingham is back behind bars for the second time after being caught once again ripping off more than a hundred customers across the country.
In June 2005, father-of-three Gurdave Sharma, 38, was fined almost £4,000 for a string of offences under the Trade Descriptions Act.
At the same time Trading Standards officers at Birmingham City Council won an order forcing him to return customers’ televisions in working order and repair them at a reasonable rate.
But complaints about him continued to roll in, sparking another prosecution in March 2006, when Sharma was jailed for 12 months after being found guilty at Birmingham County Court for breaching the order.
In August 2006 another order was made under the Enterprise Act 2002 against Sharma, banning him from continuing to rip-off customers.
However, within months of being released from prison Trading Standards officers were again being flooded with complaints by outraged customers reporting Sharma was back to his old tricks.
Sharma has now been sentenced to 15 months in prison admitting six counts of breaching the 2006 order.
It comes in the same week that Sharma, in a separate matter, pleaded guilty at Sefton Magistrates Court in Liverpool to four counts of stealing TVs, for which he is due to be sentenced on April 20.
Birmingham County Court heard how Trading Standards officers had received more than 160 complaints since 2009 from disgruntled customers of Sharma’s firm, which was based in Washwood Heath Road, Washwood Heath, and operated under different names across the country such as Northampton TV, Blackpool TV and Peterborough TV.
Barrister Jonathan Davis, prosecuting on behalf of Birmingham Trading Standards, said the complaints included TVs not being repaired with reasonable care or skill, sets not being returned to customers, and advertisements for Sharma’s firm being misleading in that they insinuated the company was local to areas across the country, when in fact it was based in Birmingham.
“Many of these cases often involved vulnerable or elderly people,” he added.
He said Trading Standards gave Sharma “considerable indulgence” by offering to help him correct his mistakes and deal with customers’ complaints, but despite this he failed to attend meetings and “ignored their compassion”.