A DEALER in top-of-the-range cars who swindled his customers out of three quarters of a million pounds when his business "hit the buffers" was jailed on Tuesday for seven years.

Altogether his firm, Menai Vehicle Solutions, based at Bangor, had losses of £1.2 million.

Gwyn Meirion Roberts, 50, of Dolgoed, Llandudno Junction, showed no emotion in the dock when Judge Huw Rees announced sentence.

A jury had found him guilty of 23 out of 25 fraud charges relating to dealings in 2015. He'd taken cash and part-exchange cars but failed to deliver the expensive new cars which had been ordered.

Many of his victims felt "humiliated and embarrassed."

Defence barrister John Philpotts described it as "reckless, head in the sand trading" as his once successful and highly regarded company became insolvent. There was no actual personal gain and Roberts was in poor health.

Matthew Corbett Jones, prosecuting, read from impact statements made by many victims, some of whom had lost life savings.

One lost £53,000, paying off Audi finance because she was anxious to retain her credit reputation.

Another man's Porsche was never delivered despite him handing in a BMW and £53,000, a man whose wife had a brain tumour lost £40,000.

Judge Rees told Roberts that as the company hit the buffers he used"guile and deception" to dupe his customers.

Previously he had a high reputation in the motor trade but became "dishonest and arrogant" when the company was collapsing.

The judge commended Det Sgt Christopher Hargrave and Mr Elwyn Roberts, who returned from retirement to unravel the frauds.

Some of the victims sat in the public seats to hear the sentence.

They heard the prosecution say there was an absence of assets although there would be a proceeds of crime hearing.