A crooked Isle of Man car dealer carried out a ‘sophisticated’ series of scams to fund his lifestyle, a court had heard.

The offences committed by Glenn Cooper, who was living in Majestic Close in Onchan at the time, spanned a 22 month-period.

Douglas Courthouse was told how the 53 year-old took out third party loans on vehicles he did not buy.

On some occasions, he took out loans before selling them on to new owners - meaning that purchasers were unaware that the vehicles remained the property of the loan company.

He also part-exchanged or sold cars on behalf of customers then failed to pass on any proceeds of the deals.

The court was told he also took money for cars that were not handed over and lied about having £4m in assets in order to secure personal loans of £130,000.

The offences were committed while Cooper was trading with his now defunct company GBM Automotive Limited.

Cooper’s crimes came to light when a loan firm was contacted by a company in the United Kingdom who was in possession of car that was subject to one of the defendant’s fraudulent loans.

He fled the Isle of Man but was arrested in the UK at the end of 2022.

An investigation by the police put the total cost of his offending at over £860,000.

Investigators reached that sum by totaling the amount of money Cooper either stole or appropriated and the amount of financial loss he put others at risk of.

Among the victims of Cooper’s cruel scams was the mum of a child with mobility issues who had asked him to sell her car. However, after giving him the keys in September 2019, she never heard from him again, a situation which sent her into a financial ‘downward spiral’.

Sentencing him to a period of nine years and 10 months behind bars, Deemster Graeme Cook said the scale of Cooper’s offences were ‘outrageous’.

He also told the court he’d used the money he made to fund his lifestyle and that the crimes were so severe that only a jail sentence was appropriate.