Three former employees of a car rental company have pleaded guilty and been sentenced at Winchester Crown Court to conspiracy to steal customer information that accident claims companies could use to make nuisance calls and sell on as personal injury claims.
The employees stole the details of tens of thousands of customers from the car hire company and sold them for hundreds of thousands of pounds, leading to unlawful contact from others making cold calls about personal injury, in a scheme that ran for almost two and a half years.
One defendant was fined £7,500, to be paid within two years with a default penalty of three months' custody.
The others, who had less involvement in the conspiracy and had either paid greater amounts of compensation or been subject to civil proceedings, were given 12 month conditional discharges but ordered to pay £3,000 and £1,200 in prosecution costs respectively.
In addition to the criminal prosecution, the car rental company had previously issued civil proceedings against the defendants, resulting in their paying the company £400,000 in civil compensation.