A mother-of-two was caught driving an uninsured van and framed for a murder.
Juliann Quilligan, 28, gave the false name Rebecca Williams after police stopped her Mitsubishi L200 towing a trailer on the M62. She then remained silent when the victim was unknowingly given eight penalty points on her licence.
Miss Williams, 34, discovered she had been wrongly convicted when she tried to renew her own car insurance. After an eight-month legal ordeal, she was forced to return to court and face a trial before her conviction was thrown out for not having insurance.
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The victim also received numerous parking tickets and missed out on job opportunities due to his unclean driving licence.
Police found Quilligan after reviewing CCTV footage of the moment he was stopped, and it emerged he knew Miss Williams through an ex-boyfriend and the pair had previously socialised together.
Quilligan said she had ”panicked” when questioned because she was ”scared” of dealing with police because of her mental health issues. Quilligan was released from court last week after telling a judge she was pregnant with her third child, who is due in September.
He was sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for 18 months, after being found guilty of perverting the course of public justice at Chester Crown Court.
The scam began after Quilligan, who moved to the UK to get away from the travel community in Galway, Ireland, was stopped while driving his van and trailer on the westbound lane of the M62 near Apollo Park in Warrington on January 5, 2022.
Prosecutor Shannon Stewart told the court: “The driver identified herself as Rebecca Williams and checks showed she did not have insurance to drive the vehicle.
“Rebecca Williams applied to an insurance company in May 2022 to get insurance and was told she had a warrant on her license for driving without insurance and other traffic violations.
“Ms Williams was unaware of any driving offences and so contacted the DVLA and was told by Chester Magistrates’ Court that she had been convicted for not having insurance. Ms Williams then contacted the police as she believed someone had given her information fraudulently.”
The court heard that Ms Williams was able to identify Quilligan after being shown footage of the incident.
“The defendant was best friends with Ms Williams’ ex-partner and so they socialised regularly,” Ms Stewart explained. “Ms Williams had no access to or possession of the vehicle.
“Ms Williams stated that as a result of this incident she had issues with parking tickets and vehicle registrations that had nothing to do with her and that her application for employment had been rejected because she needed a clean licence.
”There were serious consequences for an innocent party as a result of the offending. Ms Williams was given a conviction and penalty points, which affected her ability to obtain insurance and caused a loss of opportunity as she struggled to find work.”
Quilligan, who was arrested on November 1 of last year, Kingscote GardensThe resident of Skelmersdale, West Lancashire, denied that the person in the CCTV footage was him.
His barrister, Gareth Roberts, said in mitigation: “He is rightly ashamed and embarrassed by the way he behaved. He wants to apologise through me for any distress and inconvenience he has caused Ms Williams. He accepts that Ms Williams is a completely innocent woman who did not deserve this.
“The prospect of going into custody is frightening for this woman. She is a mother of young children and pregnant with her third child.”
Roberts argued that Quilligan’s actions were “not premeditated, carefully considered or planned.”
He added: “This was an extremely unwise decision brought about by the prospect of being questioned by a police officer, something he was not familiar with. He was also particularly ill-equipped to deal with this, given his mental health issues.
“She came from a travelling community and had a nervous breakdown in 2019. Part of that nervous breakdown led to her becoming increasingly isolated from the community and eventually led to her leaving, moving out and essentially living on her own with her two children, aged six and two.
“It was extremely difficult for her. What she achieved was stability for herself and her children. One of the things that worried her was that her children were not getting an education, that was very much the culture she grew up in and she wanted better for her children. They are both in school now.
“She’s expecting her child to be born in September. She just wants to put this behind her and continue being a good mother to her children.”
Sentencing Quilligan last Tuesday (July 16), Judge Anthony O’Donohoe also ordered him to complete 20 days of rehabilitation activity on probation.
He described Quilligan’s actions as “extremely serious” and told him: “When I first read about this case, I was deeply disturbed. I want you to know that you came very close to walking out of court, not through those doors, but through those doors that led to the cells behind you.”
“I imagine you are looking after two little boys, aged six and two, and you are expecting your third child in September.
“I accept that you are motivated to never be in this situation again where you may be separated from your children for an extended period of time. We do not want to see you again.”
Court records show Rebecca Williams, 32, from Warrington, was found guilty of driving a Mitsubishi without insurance and towing a trailer without a secondary coupling device on the M62.
She was later listed for trial at Warrington Magistrates’ Court after making a statutory declaration that she was not the driver. The charges were dropped a month later and Miss Williams was found not guilty of the offences.