Bosses of hot tub firm scammed customers out of £1.2million to fund lavish lifestyle of fast cars, private schools and exotic holidays

• Three men jailed for using company as a 'cash cow' to fund lavish lifestyle
• Their hot tub company went bust in 2010, owing customers £2.7m
• Investigators discovered they had channeled £1.2m into their own pockets
• Jailed at the Stafford Crown Court after guilty verdict in a three-month trial

By COREY CHARLTON

Published: 12:18 EST, 28 June 2014 | Updated: 14:35 EST, 28 June 2014

Simon Foster spent his profits on a lavish lifestyle that included a large house, three Porsches and overseas holidays

Three bosses of a collapsed hot tub firm who 'lived the millionaire's lifestyle' by defrauding customers out of £1.2million have been jailed for a total of eight years.

Simon Foster, 49, Stuart Cox, 40, and Jonathan Husselbee used their company as a 'cash cow' to rake in the money they spent on fast cars and holidays.

When their firm Spaserve went bust in 2010, hundreds of customers were left out of pocket to the tune of £2.7million.

But when investigators looked into the finances, they realised the trio had taken £1.2million out of company funds for themselves.

On Friday the three were jailed at Stafford Crown Court after a jury found them guilty of fraudulent trading after a three month trial.

Foster, from Lichfield, Staffordshire, was ordered to serve three-and-a-half years, Cox, from Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, was jailed for two-and-a-half years and Husselbee, from Tamworth, Staffordshire, was jailed for two years.

The court heard how the Staffordshire firm took between £6million and £8million worth of orders for around 2,000 hot tubs between April 2007 and October 2010.

But only 1,600 of those were ever delivered.

Principal shareholder Foster, together with business partner Cox and office manager Husselbee tricked their customers into believing the hot tubs were being made in America and needed to be shipped across.

They then altered delivery dates in order to stop people from cancelling their orders, and in some case just never ordered the hot tubs to be made.

Those they did deliver were substandard or manufactured in completely different countries to those they claimed.

Jailing the trio, Judge Amjad Nawaz said: 'Whilst others were losing out there was an element of self-enrichment because at the time they were still getting their money.

'Mr Foster was living a lavish lifestyle, a large house, three Porsches - one for work, one for his wife and one for social use - and his children had private education and foreign holidays.'

Office manager Jonathan Husselbee, left, and business partner Stuart Cox, right, were jailed for the scam

A Spaserve hot tub - the court heard about 400 of the company's hot tubs were sold but never delivered

Earlier Adrian Keeling QC, prosecuting, told the court: 'It was a fraud from the word go.

'This was a deliberate fraud and was sophisticated. It caused a £2.7million loss, which is significant.

'Foster in particular spent the money on a lavish lifestyle which was born out of greed.

'By his own admission he said that 'it's better to have lived a millionaire lifestyle and lost it than to never have lived a millionaire lifestyle at all'.

Speaking after the case, Kay Waterman, a horse rider from Southampton who was swindled out of £4,500, said: 'I'm thrilled. This was a simple ponzi scheme led by this man Simon Foster as a puppet master over Cox and Husselbee.

'Well tonight he is in prison while we get to go home with our families.'