Fraudster falsely named Italian architect as speeding Cumbrian driver

After being repeatedly taken to court and prosecuted for crimes he did not commit – including a speeding offence on the A66 near Penrith - 32-year-old Giuseppe Podesta was left with legal bills of around £10,000.

His plight was outlined at Carlisle Crown Court as a judge quashed his third wrongful conviction for failing to comply with a police notice that demanded he identify the driver of a speeding car caught on camera.

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On all three occasions, Mr Podesta was nowhere near the roads or cars involved. He was prosecuted after the real offender – or offenders – supplied his name and date of birth to the police forces involved.

On each occasion, he was landed with fines and costs running into hundreds of pounds and after one prosecution he was given a six-month ban.

“He asserts he is the victim of identity fraud,” prosecutor Daniel Bramhall told Judge Michael Fanning and two magistrates at Carlisle Crown Court.

Drivers are legally obliged to confirm who was driving their vehicle when it has been caught speeding on camera and this led to Mr Podesta being identified – wrongly – as the driver of a speeding Mercedes car on the A66 at Kirkby Thore in April 2020.

Yet he has never owned a Mercedes and was in London at the time, observing lockdown regulations.

During the previous prosecutions, Mr Podesta was not even in the UK, and yet the proceedings – again featuring cars he did not own, inaccurate addresses, and made-up driver licence serial numbers – went ahead regardless.

He had to fly back to the UK from his home near Lake Garda in Italy to conduct his own appeal against his latest conviction at the crown court. Mr Bramhall said the prosecution did not oppose his appeal against conviction.

After quashing it, Judge Fanning asked Mr Podesta how much he had spent on lawyers. He told the court: “For the three convictions, it’s been about £10,000.”

The judge explained that he was restricted to awarding costs linked to the case before him and authorised a £500 payment for out-of-pocket expenses linked to the appeal, but beyond that he urged Mr Podesta to speak to his lawyers.

After the case, Mr Podesta said: “It’s been very stressful, a nightmare. They went ahead with the cases even though the address sent to the police was not mine, and the cars had nothing to do with me.

“One of the cases included a photo of the car and speeding driver, and it was clearly a man in his 50s, who looks nothing like me. I was banned from driving for a month until I was able to get that overturned.

“When I was living in London, I had to do everything myself because the lawyers there are so expensive. The cheapest option was one costing £10,000 but I stopped using them because I felt I wasn’t being helped enough.”

The other cases he faced related to speeding cars in Nottingham in July 2020, and another one in Nottingham the following month when he was landed with costs of £1,319 and the ban that was later overturned.

“This happened in three different police force and council areas and still nobody noticed something was wrong," said Mr Podesta, who felt compelled to return to the UK after bailiffs arrived at his home to enforce his debt to the court.

"My driver licence number on the form that named me as the driver was wrong, but they still prosecuted. When I explained it to the police, they said there was nothing they could do because nobody stole money from me.

“I contacted Action Fraud but nobody got back to me. I’m speaking about it because I don’t want it to happen to anybody else.”

Mr Podesta was prosecuted after his details were fraudulently supplied following police sending out a Section 172 Notice, telling a driver that police intend to prosecute for a speeding offence.

Drivers are instructed to identify the person who was driving at the time the offence was committed. It is not known how Mr Podesta's details came to be supplied or who was responsible.