An Independent premium used car dealer convicted of 22 counts of fraud worth £769,210 has been ordered to pay back just £1 under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Gwyn Meirion Roberts, owner of Bangor-based Menai Vehicles Solutions was sentenced to seven years behind bars after a trial at Caernarfon Crown Court in March after a trial heard how he took cash and part-exchange vehicles from customers before failing to deliver on deals.

In an earlier hearing prosecuting barrister Matthew Corbett-Jones had told the court that 50-year-old Roberts, of Dolgoed, Llandudno Junction 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 £1.3m and 50 customers were awaiting delivery of vehicles, the North Wales Daily Post reported.

But the North Wales Daily Post reported how, at a three-minute court hearing yesterday (July 16) morning Judge Huw Rees ordered Jones to pay back just £1 under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Corbett-Jones, prosecuting, said that the sum accepted by the defence was correct, adding that investigations had shown that the only asset s available to the defendant was his pension which “cannot be accessed at this time”.

Corbett-Jones asked the court that the £1 sum not be collected until the order was revisited at a time when the pension did become available, North Wales Live reported.