Man Found Guilty of Smear Campaign against Estate Agent
A fifty three year old man from Oldham in Lancashire was given a suspended sentence by the Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court over a campaign intended to smear the reputation of an Estate Agent he had dealings with when he was trying to repurchase his house.
Martin Frostick lived in Oldham Road in Failsworth when he fell into debt and his house was in the process of being repossessed by Ryder and Dutton based in Royton, Greater Manchester. Martin claimed that the Estate Agents were sending out false notices in order to help the company from going out of business. As a result of the repossession Mr Frostick’s house was put up for resale and he attempted to purchase his house back from the agents but was unsuccessful.
Det Con Mark Tiffany who investigated the case commented that Mr Frostick had obviously felt let down by the Estate Agents and that this was his justification for trying to ruin the company.
The Campaign
It was claimed that the campaign began when Mr Frostick called the company in order to gain information about the pending house sale but that the staff he spoke to were unable to help him with his enquiries. What followed was an email accusation against the company that they had valued his house incorrectly. Evidence given to the court during the trial included copies of faxes and emails sent to the company by Mr Frostick urging for the company to close down, including an email which indicated a rumour about Ryder and Dutton and the possibility of bankruptcy attached to which was a thirty three page list of contacts that Mr Frostick planned to contact with his deceitful email.
His actions escalated and resulted in a fraudulent liquidation notice document that he had produced being distributed whereby Ryder and Dutton were inundated over the next couple of days with enquiries as to their business status. His actions left the staff feeling distraught and quite understandably defensive.
Mr Frostick was charged and found guilty of fraud but his nine month jail sentence was suspended for two years. He also received a five hundred pound fine and an order to work unpaid for a period of over two hundred hours.
Ryder and Dutton
The Chartered Surveyors and Estate Agent company was established in 1919 in Deansgate, Manchester. The independent company has a wide base of clients from all over the UK but the majority of its business is generated in the North West of England.
I am sure that the staff of this company must have been very concerned at initially seeing documentation that the company they work for was going into bankruptcy. Perhaps if more people took responsibility for their own actions in life then fewer companies would be blamed or reputations smeared.
