THE career of a law student is in tatters today, after he was jailed for lying to police and providing false documents to a court as part of a bizarre plot to dodge a speeding ticket.

Promising pupil Mohammed Ali embarked on an elaborate plan to blame somebody else for driving his car so he could avoid a £60 fine and three points on his licence.

Instead, the 23-year-old finalyear student was last night starting a nine-month prison sentence, will never complete his degree, and his law career is in ruins.

He was branded “a fraud” by Teesside Crown Court judge Les Spittle, who told him: “By reason of your studies, you ought to have known the full consequences of this.”

Ali contested the speeding ticket at Teesside Magistrates’ Court and gave justices a bundle of fake documents backing up his claim that he was not behind the wheel.

He claimed he had hired his car to a leasing company and produced paperwork purporting to confirm the arrangement, Gillian Milton, prosecuting, told the court.

Headed notepaper was also sent to Cleveland Police, saying that staff were trying to trace the driver, and there was a letter to Ali saying they would deal with the ticket.

One of the letters claimed to have identified the person driving, and named a man from Durham, while there was correspondence from the phantom culprit admitting his guilt.

Magistrates refused to fall for the scam and fined Ali £400, gave him three penalty points for the speeding offence and a further three for failing to provide information.

Police also investigated the authenticity of the leasing company, found it did not exist, and charged Ali with attempting to pervert the course of justice.

He pleaded guilty.

He told officers that he wanted to avoid getting the points on his licence or his insurance premiums to rise, and that he got the idea from a friend who got away with it.

Sukhbir Bassra, in mitigation, told the court that Ali started the lie, but it got out of hand.

“Neither his family, nor I, nor the defendant, can provide any reason for why he did what he did,” said Mr Bassra.

“His licence at the time was clean, and the fine would no doubt have been in the region of £60, but instead he has not just jeopardised, but ruined, his future career.”

Judge Spittle told Ali, of Acklam Road, Middlesbrough: “This was not just a matter of trying to get out of an offence by telling a simple lie.

“You prepared yourself for the magistrates’ court. You prepared a bundle of documents to give some credence to the basic lie you started with.

“You used your intelligence, you used your abilities, to produce not one, but a series of false documents in order to get out of a speeding fine and some points.

“You created a fictitious company, you created a fictitious defendant. The whole purpose was to defraud and delude the magistrates’ court.

Somehow, they saw through it.”