A STAMP dealer who conned four fellow philatelists in a bid to rescue his flagging business must pay back £5,000 in the next year or go to jail, a judge ruled today.

At Gloucester Crown Court Judge Lester Boothman made a £5,000 confiscation order against Colin Pye, 43, and directed that the money should be repaid to the victims.

The judge made the order after being told that prosecution and defence had agreed that £5,000 was the amount recoverable from Pye under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Judge Boothman said that if Pye does not pay up within a year he will go to prison for three months.

Last July, when he was sentenced, the court heard that Pye had promised the clients he could sell their collections on eBay and he wrote them post-dated cheques.

But a crash in the notoriously unpredicatable stamp-dealing market meant the stock would not shift and they were never paid.

Pye, of Fountain Crescent, Wotton-under-Edge, was sentenced to do 120 hours of unpaid work for the community.

He had admitted that between December 1, 2004 and January 31, 2005 he, with intent to make permanent default in whole or in part on an exisiting liability to make a payment of £500, dishonestly induced Graham Chard to wait for payment by deception, namely by falsely representing that the cheque provided was valid and would be honoured.

He also pleaded guilty to the charge that between December 1, 2004, and March 21, 2005, he stole a quantity of stamps from Michael Laughton.

On a third count, he admitted evading liability, by telling Martin White to wait for a sum of £2,250 between August 29, 2004 and October 1, 2004 while having no intention of sending the cash.

Fourthly, he pleaded guilty to evading liability by telling Mr White between October 30, 2004 and February 1, 2005 to wait for a sum of £1,800 while having no intention of sending the cash.