The director of independent used car retailer Carpoint has been handed an 18-week suspended jail sentence in relation to car clocking offences.

Shaffarat Parvez of Cromwell Road, Peterborough, pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud and one count of contravening professional diligence ahead of a hearing at Peterborough Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday (15).

The Peterborough Telegraph reported that the 31-year-old had admitted altering the mileage of a Vauxhall Corsa and Astra offered for sale from Carpoint, which is located on Whitehead Drove, Fengate, Peterborough.

The offences had been brought to light when the cars’ buyers accessed vehicle history documents online and discovered the mileage discrepancies.

Alongside his 18-week sentence, which was suspended for 24 months, Parvez and ordered to pay £6,529 costs and a victim surcharge of £115 at this week’s hearing.

Carpoint, which pleaded guilty to the same charges, was fined £4,000 and ordered to pay £10,000 costs and a £115 victim surcharge.

A spokesman for Peterborough and Cambridgeshire Trading Standards, which carried out the prosecution, said: “We take reports of vehicle fraud extremely seriously, as offences can pose a real safety risk to vehicle owners.”

In August last year AM reported on a study of vehicle mileage data from one million cars has found that 6.5% of vehicles in the UK could have been clocked.

The issue was uncovered by Rapid Car Check, which provides a free checking tool that highlights mileage discrepancies recorded between MOT tests.

Of the million cars checked, 60,501 had recorded a mileage reduction, 7,509 had a mixture of odometer readings in miles and kilometres and 3,024 had a mixture of the two, it said.

Last April Cap HPI said that one-in-14 cars on UK roads showed evidence of “mileage discrepancies” - an increase of nearly a third (30%) in just five years - and suggested that the problem could be costing motorists over £800 million every year.