Post by ajax on Jan 18, 2011 15:39:08 GMT -5
www.thisisbath.co.uk/news/Man-claims-British-food-changed-shape-ears/article-2404839-detail/article.html
Man claims British food changed the shape of his ears
Lefter Duka was cleared by the court
Lefter Duka was cleared by the court
Staff at a driving test centre in Bath were stunned when an Albanian man told them that eating English food had changed his appearance – including the shape of his ears.
A court has heard that Lefter Duka, 33, had booked in for a driving theory test at the offices in Lower Bristol Road but that the man who turned up at the reception desk looked nothing like the picture on his provisional driving licence.
Staff said he was shorter, stockier - and bearded, but the man insisted his diet in the UK had altered the way he looked.
Mr Duka has now been cleared of aiding and abetting someone to fraudulently obtain a driving licence.
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Bath theory test centre administrator Paula Davies told magistrates: “We brought up the point that he didn’t look like the photo on the licence and he said that the food here had made him put on weight compared with where he was from, Albania.
“We said that his ears were different and he said the same thing – that the food was at fault.
“We said his eyebrows were much bigger on the photo and he said he had shaved them.”
Centre manager Deborah Cox added: “I looked at the photo and it didn’t look like the man standing in front of me.
“I challenged him and he said that he had put on a lot of weight since he had been in England eating English food. I said his ears looked different and he said that was simply because of English food as well.”
The man, who was wearing paint-stained white overalls as if he worked as a decorator, was ‘over friendly and cocky,’ she said.
Ms Cox said the man had signed in as Mr Duka, with the signature matching the one on the licence – but that he had been slow and laborious as he wrote during the visit on July 29 last year.
Staff were not satisfied that the man was Mr Duka and refused to let him take the theory test.
Later, the real Mr Duka protested to the theory test centre in his home city of Gloucester that he had been turned away and asked to book another test.
Prosecutor John Armshaw told Gloucester magistrates that Mr Duka had been arrested shortly after taking - and failing - the test on January 16 this year.
Mr Duka, of Brook Street, Gloucester, had denied allowing the mystery man to pose as him in order to take a test in his name.
He said the man had only been supposed to be acting as an interpreter to help him understand the theory test.
Mr Armshaw told the court that the man had offered Mr Duka’s driving licence, National Insurance card and bank card as proof of his identity.
He told magistrates: “It is the Crown’s case that the individual who presented himself at the desk was attempting to impersonate Mr Duka and intended to sit the test in his name.
He added: “He was very friendly and sounded as if he had rehearsed the answers to the questions.”
When Mr Duka was arrested he told police he had met the man - who was from London - in Bath and paid him £220 to act as an interpreter for him during the theory test.
Mr Duka, who has a British wife and has lived in the UK for nine years, said he did not know that the man had pretended to be him or attempted to sit the test in his name.
Magistrates chairman Gordon Ferris cleared him of the offence, saying Mr Duka had been naive but a reliable witness.
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