Following a recent prosecution brought by our Trading Standards Team Tiffany Stanley of Tanyfron was sentenced at Wrexham Magistrates to 6 months imprisonment.
Stanley pleaded not guilty to 17 offences including fraud but following her trial she was found guilty of all offences.
The case arose after the Council’s Trading Standards Service, which sits within Public Protection, received multiple complaints about Stanley’s crafting business which she conducted via Facebook.
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Stanley would take orders and upfront payment for homemade craft items typically intended for the celebration of births or birthdays but occasionally to commemorate tragic events such as the death of a young child.
Goods would fail to arrive as promised and enquires would be met first with excuses and, if the customer persisted, with highly offensive and aggressive abuse through Facebook.
Because Stanley only offered payment via direct transfer into her bank account her customers had few options to obtain redress and many customers paid money for goods they never received with no realistic way to get their money back.
Trading Standards and Licensing Lead Roger Mapleson said, “This is the third occasion that we have prosecuted Tiffany Stanley for exactly the same activity.
“The second conviction earned her a suspended sentence but she continued to trade immediately after conviction on that occasion and left us with no option but to prosecute a third time which inevitably led to her imprisonment.
“She has defrauded her customers by taking money and never supplying the goods ordered and compounded this by behaving aggressively towards them and abusing them over social media.
“This kind of behaviour is completely unacceptable. We tried hard to engage with Stanley but she repeatedly failed to heed any advice forcing us to take the action we did leading to her imprisonment.”
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