A BUSINESSMAN from Chester has been told to pay £98,000 after he was jailed for a mobile phone fraud.

David Bradshaw was managing director of Control Group Services Ltd based at Sealand - the British arm of an American company providing security and cleaning services to out-of-town shopping centres.

He was jailed for four years and banned from being the director of a company for the next five years after Mold Crown Court heard how, despite earning up to £120,000 a year, he set about ordering mobile phones which were not needed and sold them on.

He also sold a company car and kept the £15,000 proceeds.

Bradshaw, who was aged 50 and lived at Shot Tower Close, Boughton, Chester, at the time of his conviction in February, has six months to pay back the cash, otherwise he could have two years added to his sentence.

Judge Niclas Parry told Mold Crown Court that of £138,000 criminal gains, £98,000 was recoverable.

Fellow defendant company secretary Warren Clays, 39, of Mold, was jailed for 32 months at the same hearing in Mold.

Clays had not spent the money he had received and it was all still available in a bank account.

The pair sold more than 300 mobile phones for £90,000.

But the company also faced a further £33,000 bill by being responsible for monthly contracts for mobiles they didn’t have.

At the time of their sentencing the Judge David Hale said it had been suggested that the fraud had been responsible for the demise of the company not only in the UK but in America too.

Both Bradshaw and Clays admitted conspiracy to defraud going back to 2014.