A FORMER councillor who was jailed for fraud was in court on Monday charged with driving without insurance.

Anthony Ramsden-Geary, pictured, who was jailed for 10 months in September 2013 for obtaining credit as an undisclosed bankrupt and five breaches of the Insolvency Act, pleaded guilty with special reasons to driving without insurance.

A district judge at Bournemouth Magistrates Court heard the 45-year-old had been stopped by police while driving a Range Rover in Charminster Road on January 31 last year.

“His response to the police officer on the report is ‘I thought it was insured’,” prosecutor Lee Turner told the court.

Ramsden-Geary told the court he had insured the vehicle with Auto Direct shortly before he was sent to prison, and that while he was incarcerated his father had renewed the Range Rover’s vehicle tax without documents – demonstrating that it was officially registered as insured.

He said the company had then stopped the insurance while he was in prison without telling him, and that he had then researched the firm and discovered other customers had suffered similar problems.

“I didn’t have any doubt at all when the police stopped me that it was insured,” the defendant, of Manor Road, Bournemouth, told the court.

“I put ‘Auto Direct scam’ into Google and pages came up loaded with exactly the same thing happening to others.”

He said he had subsequently complained to the company and had received a partial refund of his initial premium.

Mr Turner asked him if he had documents to prove he had taken out insurance with Auto Direct, but Ramsden-Geary said told the court his paperwork had been seized by the receivers during his bankruptcy proceedings.

District Judge Stephen Nicholls accepted the ‘special reasons’ behind the guilty plea and handed Ramsden-Geary a 12-month conditional discharge, and ordered him to pay £85 costs.

A separate outstanding fine of £2,029 dating back to 2012 was written off due to the defendant’s subsequent bankruptcy.