Yousaf Jewellers in Coventry Road, Small Heath, was ordered to pay a £6,500 fine and prosecution costs of £1,738 after it admitted 13 charges of breaching the Hallmarking Act.
Birmingham Magistrates’ Court heard how officers from Birmingham City Council’s Trading Standards team seized more than a dozen pieces of unhallmarked jewellery – including rings and bangles – from the store following a raid in February last year.
Jacqui Kennedy, the council’s head of regulation and enforcement, said: “People should be able to have confidence when they are buying valuable goods, like gold jewellery, that they are of the quality they purport to be. It’s important for Trading Standards to take action and bring cases like this to the public’s attention.”
She said Birmingham is famous for its jewellery trade, but rogues were threatening to damage the city’s reputation by flogging gold that is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Trading Standards has spent the last five years working to stop the con merchants who have been caught red-handed selling unhallmarked jewellery.
The team’s work has included swoops on dozens of stores in Alum Rock, Saltley, Sparkbrook, Sparkhill, Washwood Heath, Bordesley Green and Handsworth.
The crackdown has been such a success that Trading Standards won the first ever Touchstone Award from the British Hallmarking Council in recognition for its work protecting consumers.
