Background
Frederic Priestley, a 34-year-old man of previous good character, pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity to fraud by false representation. Between March and October 2025, he offered numerous victims a tenancy of a London flat, supplied apparently legitimate agreements, and collected deposits and sometimes advance rent. Shortly before each proposed move, he falsely claimed that the property had become unavailable. He used later victims’ payments to fund some refunds and spent other proceeds on gambling. Payments into two bank accounts totalled £77,406.15, and 34 victims reported their experiences to Action Fraud.
The Crown Court imposed 35 months’ immediate imprisonment. Treating the offence as culpability Category A was undisputed, but the Recorder mistakenly said the defence had agreed that victim impact moved the offence from harm Category 3 to Category 2 and adopted the five-year Category 2 starting point. The Recorder also initially applied the wrong guilty-plea discount before correcting it. She declined to suspend the resulting sentence.
The Recorder conducted the sentencing hearing remotely because she could not travel for medical reasons, while Priestley, counsel, court staff, and observers were in the courtroom. Counsel had not been warned or invited to make representations, no live-link direction under section 51 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 was recorded, and the Recorder apparently could not see Priestley. Priestley did not allege that the hearing was unfair, and unfairness was not a ground of appeal.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeal granted permission, allowed the appeal, quashed the 35-month sentence, and substituted 24 months’ imprisonment. It held that the victims’ evidence, viewed overall, showed medium impact rather than the most serious level of harm. The Recorder should not have assumed that victims who supplied no statements had suffered in the same way as those who did. The amount obtained, the number of victims, and the sustained offending justified moving from the three-year Category A3 starting point to the top of that category’s range—four years—but not adopting the next category’s five-year starting point.
The court also held that the Recorder gave insufficient weight to Priestley’s mitigation, including his genuine remorse before arrest, acceptance of responsibility, positive good character, ADHD, efforts to address his longstanding gambling addiction, and progress while on bail and in prison. It reduced the four-year term by 12 months for mitigation and then applied full credit for the early guilty plea, producing a two-year sentence.
The court refused to suspend the sentence. Although Priestley had good rehabilitation prospects and no history of breaching court orders, the planned, sophisticated, financially motivated fraud targeted many victims over several months and left compensation claims exceeding £37,000. The court concluded that appropriate punishment required immediate custody.
Key Takeaways
- A sentencing court may adjust upward for victim impact, but it must rely on evidence and should not assume that victims who supplied no statements suffered the same degree of harm as those who did.
- A judge may participate remotely in a Crown Court sentencing hearing, but such a course will rarely be appropriate where custody is likely and must satisfy the statutory interests-of-justice requirements.
- Before directing a judge’s remote participation, the Resident Judge should be consulted, the parties should be told the reason and allowed to make representations, and the direction and reasons should be recorded on the digital case system.
Why It Matters
The judgment clarifies both fraud sentencing and the procedure for judicial participation by live link. It distinguishes medium victim impact from the serious impact required to move into the next harm category and confirms that gambling addiction may explain offending and carry mitigating weight without excusing it.
It also gives practical guidance for the exceptional case in which a Crown Court judge proposes to sentence remotely. Advance notice, consultation, party submissions, effective audiovisual participation, an interests-of-justice ruling, and a transparent record are statutory and procedural safeguards rather than matters of convenience.