TWO brothers could have made more than £1 million by misleading thousands of customers into visiting a Lapland-style theme park, a court heard this morning.
Visitors to Lapland New Forest were offered a winter wonderland with snow-covered log cabins, a nativity scene, husky dogs, polar bears and other animals, as well as a bustling Christmas market.
Instead of the promised magical festive treat, visitors experienced fairy lights hung from trees and a broken ice rink.
Within days of the attraction opening in November 2008, hundreds of disgruntled visitors to the park on the Hampshire-Dorset border complained to trading standards they had been ripped off, Bristol Crown Court heard.
With visitors charged £30 a ticket and with up to 10,000 advance bookings online, the owners were set to make £1.2 million, prosecutor Malcolm Gibney told the court.
The two men behind Lapland New Forest, brothers Victor and Henry Mears, both from Brighton, faced a jury accused of eight charges of selling misleading advertising.
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