Fraudster jailed for selling duff scanners to British navy

LONDON: A man who sold useless underwater scanning technology to Britain´s Ministry of Defence (MoD) in a planned fraud was jailed for three years and four months on Friday.

Company boss Carl Tiltman, 56, used fake test results to trick the Royal Navy about its capabilities, Southwark Crown Court in south London was told. Navy personnel were put at risk by carrying out "completely futile" live training operations to test the laser-emitting kit which "produced no meaningful results whatsoever", it heard.

Tiltman, a former MoD employee, persuaded the ministry to place orders for specialist sonar imaging devices and safety equipment worth around £1.4 million ($1.85 million, 1.65 million euros).

The deception started in May 2017 when he made presentations about what the scanning equipment could do, using fabricated results. The LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology used lasers to detect and scan items like ships and underwater pipelines to produce images for analysis.

LIDAR produced rough pictures which Tiltman used "as the basis for his own, more detailed fabrication" to fool officials, prosecutor John Greany said. The court was told service personnel were exposed to unnecessary risk after training for up to eight months to carry out live exercises with machinery which emitted lasers potentially harmful to eyesight.

The fraud unravelled in January 2018 after the MoD was warned by a third party. Tiltman admitted fraud by false representation and fraud by abuse of position in November last year and was sentenced on Friday.

"Your offending was clearly very serious indeed," judge Christopher Hehir told him.