Blackburn ticket tout's sentence halved (From Blackburn Citizen)

Blackburn ticket tout's sentence halved

10:00pm Sunday 15th November 2009

• Print
• Email
• Share

A FOOTBALL tout jailed after he applied for hundreds of Manchester United and England tickets under a series of bizarre false names, only to sell them on at a profit, has had his jail term halved on appeal.

The cut in Suhail Patel's eight-month sentence will mean he is eligible for release almost immediately, having been in custody since the beginning of October.

He had argued that he was simply such a loyal fan that he could not resist exploiting the loophole in the tickets allocation system he discovered.

He admitted two counts of fraud, one of converting criminal property and one of possessing criminal property at Preston Crown Court in February this year, after he was caught touting tickets outside Old Trafford in October 2007.

Police discovered he had used more than 200 different names to apply for match tickets on 151 occasions, obtaining tickets which had a face value of £31,000.

Patel, 24, of Eldon Road, Blackburn, sold many of the tickets on, making an estimated profit of £14,000, London's Criminal Appeal Court heard.

Judge Peter Jacobs QC, who heard Patel's appeal against sentence, said the offences were committed with "a lack of regard for public order and safety".

The court heard the system of ticket allocation was an essential measure to protect crowd safety and was set up to ensure there could never be a repeat of the Hillsborough disaster.

"In the light of those observations, it would be quite impossible to say that there was anything wrong with the sentence passed," the appeal judge added.

But he said because Patel had waited so long to be sentenced while a full financial investigation into his profits was carried out, his sentence should be cut.

"The reduction is made because of the delays in sentencing and the expectation that Patel might have had that the resolution of that issue (the amount of his profits)” he concluded.

• Print
• Email
• Share