Trading Standards on trail of Regitech boss

Trading Standards investigators across London are banding together to ban Desmond Johnson, director of reseller Regitech Data Systems (RDSL), from running any companies in the future.

Desmond 'Chubby' Johnson, as he calls himself, told PC Dealer he was a 'poet, not a businessman' and could not commit himself to a business which has attracted more than 100 complaints in a month from unhappy customers.

RDSL began trading in January.

Monica Carly, an investigator at the Trading Standards office in Croydon, told PC Dealer she and other staff had been monitoring RDSL for months after receiving complaints from customers about non-fulfilled orders for computers.

PC Dealer has monitored RDSL for two months and discovered it was the tenth company owned by Johnson, of which five have been dissolved and two were forced into liquidation by creditors.

Carly said Trading Standards was using this information to involve Companies House, alerting its investigators to Johnson.

She said: 'We believe RDSL has ceased trading in Croydon. It gave us an address in the City but when we tried it we were told RDSL would not be allowed there.

'RDSL said it had resolved all the problems, but when we contacted the customers nothing had happened. I don't think anyone who paid by any means other than credit card will get any money back.'

Johnson was not contactable after giving PC Dealer cellphone numbers that did not work. But in one of two interviews before he was unavailable, he admitted his former companies had debts totalling about #400,000.

See investigation page 32.