A CLOTHING entrepreneur said he was “carted away” by police officers who arrived “mob-handed” to arrest him.

Mike Smallman said his arrest and recall to prison in October 2013 had destroyed his business and a large part of his life.

Mr Smallman is on trial at Teesside Crown Court and pleads not guilty to defrauding customers of his former firm APM Clothing Developments, based in Newton Aycliffe, between August 2012 and October 2013.

The 52-year-old, of Castle Hill, Richmond, North Yorkshire, said he pleaded with a police officer to allow him to make a phone call in order that his employees could explain the situation to customers and arrange refunds for them.

Mr Smallman suggested police had not done their job properly by making insufficient inquiries and said initially complaints against him were treated as civil matters, not criminal.

He said he was “fixing things”, having sent out eight or ten token refunds before the firm shut down due to his imprisonment.

He said: “If they [the police] think I am some form of master criminal and believed I was running a bogus business it must have prompted their imaginations when they came through the doors and saw work in progress on display.

“I said ‘We are a working company, don’t do this’, but I was carted away.”

The defendant said it had been his right to come out of prison in 2012 - following a previous conviction for fraud - and start a business and stated he had been hard working, as were his staff.

He denied he had told lies about the status of orders and claimed one customer, Mark Phillips, had “spat his dummy out” because of things he had read on Twitter and in the newspapers about him.

He added: “Nobody ever gave me the benefit of the doubt that I was telling the truth, not one person.

“Yes I was gambling, maybe the pressure I was under made me gamble more than I should have done.”

Prosecutor Liam O’Brien, cross-examining Mr Smallman, said: “It may well be that you have set out with the best of intentions but you began to slip back into old habits and behave dishonestly.

“You began to siphon off money to pay for your own selfish needs.”

The barrister said polo shirt samples produced for Mr Phillips had been “absolute tat” and also referred to there being virtually no examples of significant funds being spent by the firm on fabrics or materials.

Mr O’Brien quizzed the defendant about loans he is alleged to have fraudulently taken out in the name of his former girlfriend without her knowledge and said all along Mr Smallman had been “changing his story to suit”.

The trial continues.