A LYTHAM pet food boss has been jailed for three years after fiddling his books.

Simon Haythornthwaite, owner of Pet Express and Boundary Nutrition, covered up vast losses and illegally gained £1.74 million, with no-one able to account for where the money had gone.

The 42-year-old of Cartmell Road, St Annes, admitted charges of false accountancy, fraudulent trading and seven charges of obtaining money by deception when he appeared at Preston Crown Court on Tuesday (June 29). He was also banned from running a major company for ten years.

The court heard how Haythornthwaite had duped financial houses and used a false invoicing system to raise more cash.

Judge Peter Openshaw told him: "You were a hardworking, respectable and well-respected member of the community but you are quite unfit to run a major company. There was a massive amount of money involved which made this a major fraud"

Prosecutor Mr John Jones said the offences were committed during an 11-month period between July, 1997 and June, 1998. The deception offences, totalling £242,525, involved Haythornthwaite getting finance companies to lend him money for his firms for items which were never bought.

In addition, said Mr Jones, he obtained £1.5 million in fraudulent trading after a finance company agreed to fund him with a credit limit to help his companies' cash flow. However, he produced invoices for bogus amounts and bogus companies.

Haythornthwaite was made bankrupt in March and Wayne Jackson, defending, told the court his client had not lined his own pockets.

The companies started losing money in 1995 and the financial position became unworkable. "He buried his head in the sand and left his business sense behind him," said Mr Jackson. "What he did was not a particularly sophisticated type of fraud. He claimed that only 20 per cent of the invoices involved were false."

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