Fraudster David Aves of Suffolk jailed again after life of crime

Aves had spent most of his adult life in prison for fraud offences

A Suffolk man has been jailed for illegally selling vehicles - the latest in a string of more than 150 fraud offences committed in his lifetime.

David Aves, 54, of Bradfield St George, had spent most of his adult life in prison, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

He admitted fraudulently selling the vehicles to his victim for £9,000 in October, just days after his release from prison for a previous conviction.

He was jailed again for 13 months for the latest offence.

The prosecution said he had agreed to buy the three vehicles - a Kubota mini excavator owned by Aston Plant Hire of Mildenhall, Suffolk, and a Mercedes van and a JCB farm loader owned by a site in Timworth, Devon.

'Inevitability of detection'

Despite not having paid for or taken delivery of them, he took money from a businessman to whom he agreed to sell the vehicles.

Katharine Moore, Aves's defence counsel, said his mother had recently died and he had been diagnosed with an unspecified "serious medical condition".

She said he had used his own bank account in the fraud and "there was an inevitability that he would be detected".

Sentencing him, Judge John Devaux said, that despite his poor health, Aves had shown "little diminution of his powers" to commit fraud.

He told Aves: "It may be that you will be shocked into ceasing to offend, but that remains to be seen."

The court also heard that Aves managed to get released from Norwich Prison in 1995 using forged papers which he had arranged to have faxed to the jail.

His first fraud conviction was in 1976.