the norton motorcycle company has had
over a dozen owners over its 124 year
on-again off-again run but for the last
few years one sketchy character has come
up as the height of controversy and
fraud and just general sleaziness
against motorcyclists and his name is
stuart garner garner is the former owner
of norton motorcycles and a man pretty
much hated by every single fan of
british motorcycling me i'm adrian from
a motorcycle i usually make videos aimed
at helping motorcyclists but in this
case we're gonna do a little news report
because two years ago i started covering
the story and i promised you guys when
there was an update i would give it to
you and here we finally are first a
quick synopsis for those of you guys who
don't know who i'm talking about this is
stuart gardner he used to own norton
motorcycle company he's been accused of
swindling motorcyclists and swindling
pensioners that means little old ladies
are just getting their life savings
ripped off because of this dude he is
one greasy guy
stuart garner crazy bastard even just
the way he came about buying norton in
the first place was hella greasy so what
i mean by that is he was looking to get
loans to get money to purchase the
company and one of the ways he did it
was
he kind of frauded the people who he was
getting money lent from so
he offered as collateral 100 of a
business that he owned
you know if i can't pay you back you can
have my business the only problem was he
didn't actually own this business he
only owned like 50 of it but he offered
the whole hundred percent of the
business as collateral
so stuart garner crazy bastard and the
next million pounds that he got which is
about 1.3 million us he got this was
money that came out of a scam so he
wasn't involved in this scam but he had
two associates that were they were both
convicted of fraud from this scam and
they turned around and they took the
fraudulent money and they gave him a
loan with the money so while stuart
gardner was not actually
implicated in this um
it's to me it's just greasy so now he's
bought norton he's got a bunch of
pensioners uh funds
heavily invested in it and he is taking
deposits left right and center and in
some cases making people pay in full for
motorcycles before they have even been
produced let alone delivered he uses the
funds to buy himself a mansion that's
pretty much a castle anybody familiar
with motorcycle racing or the british
motorcycle scene will have heard of
donnington hell it's not technically a
castle but let me put it this way when
the french revolution kicked off and the
uh french monarchy was fleeing the
company to live in exile in the uk they
lived in donington castle so this place
is not a okay this is a nice
place he bought himself that to be
norton's headquarters but it was really
just a glorified castle for himself to
live in
stuart garner crazy bastard
rather than do things like i don't know
spend money on research and development
make sure his products were safe pay his
suppliers so he could actually get the
parts that he needed to make the
motorcycles that he'd already sold even
though he didn't have parts to build
them he used the pension funds and
motorcycle deposits to purchase an aston
martin for himself
no i'm just kidding about that he used
the funds to purchase six aston martins
for himself because one was not a big
enough waste of pensioners money he
bought himself six
me
stuart garner
so i don't think i need
to explain to you guys that when you
spend all the money on not buying the
parts you need to make motorcycles
because you're not paying your suppliers
and instead buying yourself a freaking
castle and six aston martins the company
went belly up and most people did not
get their norton motorcycles and some of
the people who did still got screwed
anyway you know if there's a warranty
problem with the bike and the customer
brings it back to norton hq so that
norton can fix the stuff under warranty
well norton had no way of getting parts
so they would just take the parts off of
your warranty bike put it on a different
bike that way they could fulfill an
order from someone else get someone
else's money and then just try and keep
the sham running for as long as they
could and that's not a knock on the
workers because they're just you know
following directions they don't really
know what's going on behind the scenes
basically i don't want to i don't want
to make it seem like i'm making light of
this because it is something really sad
but i don't want to do a video that was
super depressing either the reality is
though it does suck it left many seniors
totally screwed out of their pensions
totally screwed up their life savings
it's ruined lives it's ruined
relationships it's been for a lot
of people and then even the
motorcyclists like our own community
that was affected the situation really
sucks so i'm trying to make this
lighthearted
as much as i can so this video just
isn't going to be super depressing so
obviously eventually the company would
go bankrupt they would get bought up by
tvs which is a giant and the small
displacement motorcycle scene in india
tbs so far has been doing a
doing some good stuff like they've
issued recalls on the norton motorcycles
that were made during the garner era
which i think is cool
but they have been
totally tight-lipped and not said a word
on whether or not they're gonna honor
any of the deposits that were put down
by previous purchases or what's going on
there they haven't said a word about
that so
tps motors
still kind of greasy i i don't know i
mean they were frauded out of about 18
million the pensioners so for a
multi-billion dollar company 18 million
is not it's not pocket change but it's
not gonna make or break you know their
future so the fact that they have not
done anything
if not for the pensioners at least for
the motorcyclist who put money down tvs
motors
a little bit kind of maybe greasy anyway
we have an update on the stuart garner
situation from rideapart.com which i
will uh read you a few excerpts
basically i said he was a sole trustee
over three separate pension funds these
added up to about 18.7 million dollars
altogether when the pensioners and their
families attempted to pull the funds out
they weren't able to which is totally
illegal garner pleaded guilty to pension
fund mismanagement but said it was done
in error not on purpose
i didn't know any better
i feel like if you have 18 million
dollars of
some people's money you should have an
accountant and he will know better or
she will know better
i don't buy it at all apparently the
judge didn't buy it either but at the
same time the sentencing was complete
garbage
for his punishment for ruining the lives
of these people because let's be honest
if you lose fifty thousand or a hundred
thousand dollars when you're 30 years
old
you have time to make that back you have
time to
to recoup but if you lose that money
when you're 60 70 80 years old
you can't right you can't all his
punishment was was
an eight-month sentence suspended for
two years so what that basically means
is if he commits no further offenses
within that two-year time frame he will
not have to serve any time whatsoever
and even if he does do something
terrible like i don't know kills your
cat right in front of you um he's only
gonna go to jail for eight months for
the fraud that he did that that ruins so
many people's lives to me that's
absolutely
absolutely insane and unfair so where
does that leave everything all the
pieces that we've been talking about
well a uk pension ombudsman basically
ordered him to pay back the 17 million
dollars u.s and stuart gardner's uh easy
way out of that was he just declared
bankruptcy and and when you declare
bankruptcy you're no longer on the hook
for any of your stuff from before stuart
garner
and as for all of the
motorcyclists it seems like they're kind
of equally up the creek without a paddle
and tvs has not really commented or
promised them anything
so that is is
you know another part of this this whole
thing is a disaster really i'm really
curious to know what your thoughts are
on this whole norton saga specifically
if you guys are from the uk
or india where you're a little bit
closer to tvs you're a little bit closer
to norton i'd love to hear what you guys
have to say please leave me a comment
let me know and even if you're not from
there let me know do you agree that the
sentencing was just i know
white collar crime and all but
this
as always thank you guys so much for
watching ride safe but have fun hit
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