A taxi tout has been jailed for duping a young Japanese language student into paying £360 for a ride.

Kenneth Grieveson, who worked as an unlicensed taxi driver at Heathrow, charged Yuko Ando for a 73-mile trip from the airport to Lewes and left the distressed youngster in the town centre.

Grieveson and another unlicensed cabbie, Frederick Gross, approached vulnerable students as they arrived in the UK for the first time and charged them hundreds of pounds over the odds for cab rides.

They wore official looking clothes and claimed to be the driver for their victim's journey, even though the students had paid for a taxi in advance.

Grieveson, 47, and Gross, 35, would charge the students huge sums before passing them on to other unlicensed taxi drivers, who would take them to the language schools where they were staying.

One 15-year-old Japanese girl was charged £340 for a cab ride to Southampton while another young Japanese student was forced to pay £240 for a taxi ride to Golders Green, north London.

Gross charged one young Japanese student £480 for a cab ride to Oxford even though she was trying to get a bus.

The victims, who spoke little English, were sometimes driven to cash machines so they could withdraw the money to pay the huge fares.

Grieveson, of Monmouth Road, Portsmouth, was found guilty of three counts of obtaining property by deception last month.

He was yesterday sentenced at Isleworth Crown Court to two years for each of the three counts, to run concurrently.

Gross, formerly of Hertfordshire but now living in Suffolk, pleaded guilty to three counts of obtaining property by deception.

He was sentenced to 15 months in prison for each count to run concurrently.