Rogue clampers fail to cut sentences

Two rogue car clampers who preyed on motorists in the Midlands have failed in a bid to overturn their jail sentences.

Rebecca Meakin, aged 27, pictured, and Kamren Hayder Khan, aged 29, were jailed at Stafford Crown Court in May for conspiracy to blackmail after bullying and harassing motorists into paying extortionate sums to prevent their cars being towed away.

They targeted drivers in Rugeley at the Red Lion car park, as well as LA Rock Cafe and Midland Tattoo Centre in Cannock and at sites in Worcester.

Yesterday the pair, who received four years and four-and-a-half years respectively, tried to get the sentences reduced claiming they were "manifestly excessive".

Mr Justice Maddison, sitting with Mrs Justice Swift, heard Meakin and Khan, her "trusted lieutenant", were involved in a legitimate business operating licensed car parks for small businesses and pubs in Rugeley and Cannock.

Meakin, of Millers Vale, Heath Hayes, who was the driving force behind the business, was licensed to run the clamping operation.

But the tactics they employed were extortionate and at times carried an "implicit threat", said Mr Justice Maddison.

They charged £95 to remove a clamp and £295 to retrieve a car that had been towed away, said the judge, but the sting of their crime lay in charging the full £295 even before the vehicles had been towed from the scene.

The notices displaying their rates and warnings were often not prominently displayed. In one incident, at a car park near the Midland Tattoo centre, a doctor answering an emergency was hit with a £295 on-the-spot cash fine after parking in a restricted space.

The medic had left his car to fetch an "urgent blood sample" from a 90-year-old woman, but when he explained his predicament to Meakin, and showed her the sample, his plea "fell on deaf ears". In another episode, a grandmother watched in horror as they clampers tried to tow her car with her 30-month-old grandson inside.

Mr Justice Maddison said their sentences were "severe" but not excessive.