A soldier provided a forged car insurance certificate in an effort to evade a ban was caught because his certificate was valid until February 31st 2009.

Furthermore, the certificate was issued for a period of 13 months which is of course also incorrect as motor insurances only run for a maximum of 12 months.

Christopher Woodruff already had 18 penalty points on his licence, only escaping a driving ban previously because of his career ambitions, and need for the use of a car in order to take his wife to hospital appointments.

Police stopped Mr Woodruff in February this year following which he was instructed to produce his insurance documents. When he failed to do so, he was summonsed to appear before Plymouth Magistrates’ Court on August 5.
He produced an insurance certificate to the court and instructed to produce it at the local police station. He was caught out by a clerk who became suspicious when noticing the the certificate had the non existent expiry date of February 31st.

 The court also heard that Mr Woodruff was leaving the army and had ambitions to join the police which the judge told him was no longer going to be possible.

He was sentenced to a 10 month jail sentence, suspended for two years banned from driving for 6 months and ordered to do 150 hours of unpaid community work.

Potential offenders beware - you must realise that you can’t drive while uninsured and try to get away with it.