A premium car dealer has been found guilty of defrauding customers after taking cash and part-exchange vehicles but failing to deliver on deals that were “too good to be true”.

North Wales car dealer Gwyn Meirion Roberts, who ran Menai Vehicle Solutions in Bangor, took cash and part-exchange vehicles from customers for vehicles that never materialised, a jury sitting at Caernarfon crown court heard.

In court yesterday (February 4), a jury found Roberts guilty of 13 of the 25 charges against him, with a further 12 charges yet to be decided upon, a report by the North Wales Daily Post stated.

Prosecuting barrister Matthew Corbett-Jones had told the court in an earlier hearing that 50-year-old Roberts – who maintains that it was not his intention to defraud his customers – had taken customers’ cash and part-exchange vehicles in a bid to prop up his ailing business.

Corbett-Jones said that customers had expected to receive new vehicles but the deals they were offered by Roberts had been “too good to be true”, adding that "he himself stood to lose substantial amounts of cash on these deals”.

Jones said that the defendant had manufactured “absurd deals he could not honour”.

Menai Vehicle Solutions entered voluntary liquidation on October 2, 2015.

At the time of the collapse, creditors were owed £1,308,879 and 50 customers were awaiting delivery of vehicles, the North Wales Daily Post reported.

The hearing was adjourned to February 12.