An aspiring lawyer, described as a ‘serial traffic offender’, has been jailed for 90 days for forging insurance documents.
Theodore O’Neil Morgan, 40, appeared before the Grand Court on Friday, 13 Jan., for his latest traffic infringement which occurred on 14 June 2020, when he was signalled by police officers to pull over after having been caught speeding.
During the traffic stop, officers discovered Morgan did not have a valid insurance policy for the Toyota Vitz he was driving, and the car’s registration and licence were also expired.
From that incident, he was summoned to attend court in March 2021. During his brief court appearance, Morgan entered guilty pleas to the charges of driving an unlicensed and unregistered vehicle. However, he denied the charge of driving without insurance and produced a certificate of insurance from Saxon, but didn’t hand it over after claiming that it was his only copy and that he would email a version to the prosecution.
“It was by chance that the Crown counsel assigned to the Traffic Court was Ms Sarah Lewis who herself was a Saxon customer, and detected irregularities with the document,” noted Justice Cheryll Richards when sentencing; she had convicted Morgan following a judge-alone trial.
During the trial, Lewis told the court that she “thought something was off with the document and so she followed up with Saxon to verify that the policy was in fact genuine”.
Saxon would later confirm that the policy produced by Morgan was fraudulent and that he forged the signature of a supervisor when producing the fake document.
In a social inquiry report, Morgan is said to have accepted his wrongdoing following his conviction, and “when his actions were revealed he was nervous as he was afraid of the impending consequences”.
The report goes on to say that Morgan was “embarrassed and ashamed of his behaviour”.
This is not the first time that he has been caught driving without insurance.
In 2009 he was jailed, for an undisclosed period, for driving without insurance. He was before the courts again in 2016 for driving whilst disqualified.
“The defendant is a serial traffic offender whose motive was to thwart the penalties of his wrongdoing,” said Richards.
She added, “In this case, the defendant presented a fraudulent certificate to the Court with the sole purpose of defeating justice… his behaviour was disgraceful… and should be met with a deterring sentence for other like-minded individuals.”
Although Richards identified Morgan as a serial traffic offender, she noted that the offence surrounding fraudulent activity was a new form of offending.
“The defendant who is aged 40, is unemployed and lives with his mother and has recently completed an online law degree,” said Richards.”His risk of re-offending is said to be low.”
For the charge of doing an act to defeat the course of justice, Morgan was sentenced to one month, for the charge of producing a forged document he was sentenced to three months. Both sentences were ordered to run concurrently, leaving him with a sentence of three months.
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