A garage owner and his former wife have been jailed for Britain's biggest ever MOT scam.

Roobik Mirzabegi, from Beeston in Leeds was found guilty of three counts of conspiracy to defraud at Leeds Crown Court last October, after an investigation by the Vehicle Operator Services Agency (VOSA) and West Yorkshire Police.

Mirzabegi used four garages in the city to issue thousands of invalid MOT certificates for vehicles that were not properly tested.

Believed to have made vast sums of money due to the scale of the operation, Mirzagebi has now been was sentenced to four years in prison for each count to run concurrently.

His ex-wife Julie Mirzabegi was sentenced to 9 months for fraud and two years for money laundering, also to run concurrently.

Alex Fiddes, VOSA chief operating officer, said: “I am delighted with the prison sentences that the Judge handed out.

"It demonstrates that VOSA will apply as much resource as necessary to bring the most serious instances of offending in the MOT scheme before the courts. MOT computerisation has brought new opportunities for fraud detection."