WHEN a wealthy merchant banker was caught speeding as he drove to his second home in Cumbria he persuaded his girlfriend to take the blame for him.

Then, believing he was in the clear, Stephen Quas boasted on a drivers’ website of how he had evaded justice.

Unknown to him, the site was being monitored by Cumbria police, and today Quas and his girlfriend are wearing electronic tags and have been handed heavy community service sentences for perverting the course of justice.

Quas, of Clapham, South London, was caught by a mobile camera on the M6 while driving at 88mph in his BMW last December.

He was photographed between Tebay and Penrith, on the way to his home near Cockermouth, just outside the Lake District National Park. The evidence, however, was not conclusive.

Mobile cameras carry a powerful 300-600 mm telephoto lens that can capture the faces of drivers even at high speeds, but in this case the view was obscured by the car’s sun visor. Quas persuaded his girlfriend, Isabelle Fortot, to say that it was her face that had been hidden.

He was so pleased with himself, he boasted of his exploits on the drivers’ forum website, PePiPoo.com, which describes itself as “helping the motorist to get justice”.

Quas wrote: “The photo doesn’t show my face, so I guess my girlfriend, who rarely drives, will have just got her first points.”

After that it was not difficult for Cumbria police to track down the real offender.

Quas was handed 240 hours’ community service; Fortot was given 200 hours. Both were electronically tagged after they admitted perverting the course of justice.

Judge Barbara Forrester, at Carlisle Crown Court, told them they were lucky not to be going to prison.

Drivers’ groups said last night that motorists were committing a serious offence if they tried to cheat by asking family members to take their penalty points.

Andrew Howard, of the AA Motoring Trust, said: “People have gone to jail for less than this. The fact that this happened is a warning to drivers if they try this.”

Steve Callaghan, a safety camera manager, said that the number of drivers trying to palm their motoring offences off on other people was increasing.

“Yesterday six people nominated people of the wrong sex as the offending driver, but we give them the chance to change their minds,” he said.

“We always warn someone if they try to claim they weren’t the driver, and they have the chance to come and see the photos. We know this is going on and one of the things we now do is monitor websites and other drivers’ resources to see what is going on.”

Quas is not the first offender to rue an internet boast that alerted the police.

In January 2003, Raymond Casling, 24, was jailed for three years after bragging on the Friends Reunited website about selling cocaine. Police noticed that Casling had written in a greetings message to the class of 1994 at Ryehills School that he was “selling a lot of Charlie in Redcar”.

Officers found that, although Casling earned £45 a week working in an amusement arcade, he was driving three cars, including a Porsche.

Casling pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine with intent to supply at Teesside Magistrates’ Court. Detective Constable Tim Murphy said at the time: “We couldn't believe that he would be so stupid, but he couldn't resist boasting about how successful he was.”

Detective Constable Tim Murphy said: “We were already after him when we saw his entry on Friends Reunited.”

When police picked him up he had £400 on the floor of one of his cars and another £ 1,000 in a locked cupboard at home. He had made more than £30,000 from drug dealing.