A 34-year-old father of three who ran a puppy farm in Lydney but conned customers into thinking they were buying family raised pets has been jailed for nine months.

Gloucester Crown Court court heard that Leigh Hancock was turning out ‘conveyor belt puppies’ which were in poor condition when he sold them.

Hancock admitted nine regulatory offences, and one of possessing criminal property and was jailed for nine months.

The court heard Hancock, now residing at the Old Dry Arch Cottages, Ross-on-Wye, ‘blitzed’ social media with adverts for puppies that were purportedly the result of ‘accidental pregnancies’, but were in fact from his ‘puppy farm’ at the back of his former home in Rodley Road, Lydney.

The offences dated between June 2016 and March 2017 but prosecutor Rosamund Rutter told the court that the operation was running well before those dates.

Hancock admitted placing sixty advertisements between July 2016 and March 2017 which implied the pups he was selling were from a family home.

He also admitted withdrawing £23,134.56 of ‘criminal property’ from his bank on March 29, 2017 when authorities executed a search warrant at his address and he became aware they were there.

He was jailed for nine months for the proceeds of crime offence and fined £1,800 for the regulatory offences.

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