Hartlepool conman paid for £3,000 furniture with counterfeit notes

A judge has suspended a jail sentence on four-times convicted fraudster Terry Tyers, 39, saying that his future behaviour would decide whether he ended up behind bars again.

Tyers, from Hartlepool, calling himself Eddie Morris, paid the cash to a delivery driver who had been instructed to drop off 30 wooden stools at an address in Maltby, near Stockton, which was an empty house under restoration.

The notes were in two sealed Santander bags, each of £1,000, and he added another £800 from his pocket, Teesside Crown Court was told.

He told the driver that the house was his brother’s and he hoped to move into it in the next few weeks.

But when the furniture supplier took the cash to the NatWest Bank he was told that it was counterfeit currency, said prosecutor Martin Towers.

Tyers was traced to his home 18 miles away in Hartlepool and despite repeated promises following the 2018 offences he failed to repay the money.

He denied he was responsible and he offered to take part in an identification parade, where he was picked out by the driver.

Prosecutors told Teesside Crown Court that Tyers had been jailed in 2012 for fraud and in 2014 and 2015 for making false representations.

Ian Mullarkey, defending, said that Tyers had made a new life for himself according to a pre-sentence report and he had saved up money to pay compensation.

Judge Chris Smith told him:”Over the last 20-odd years you have ratcheted up a raft of dishonest offences and in September 2018 you were involved in another serious offence of dishonesty.”

The judge added: ”I’m not going to make a decision as to whether you go to prison I am leaving it to you.

”The reason I am doing that is because of the progress you have made as set out in the pre-sentence report.”

Tyers, of Murray Street, Hartlepool, was given an 18-months jail sentence, which was suspended for 18 months, was ordered to complete 18 sessions of a Thinking Skills programme, 20 days of rehabilitation activities and to pay £100 compensation after he pleaded guilty to passing counterfeit currency.

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