A businessman convicted of importing fake beauty products has been ordered to pay more than £264,000 or be locked up for three years.

Hanif Memon, sales manager at Memon Group Ltd, was told on Friday during a hearing at Wood Green Crown Court in Lordship Lane that he has five months to pay £264,831.37 to the Government to avoid being jailed.

Enfield Borough Council prosecuted the sales manager, who works in an office in Goodwin Road in Edmonton, after he was caught importing more than 1,500 counterfeit health and beauty products into the UK.

The money he has been ordered to pay is based on the value of the fake products seized from his business premises as well as from the amount of money he has earned from sales.

The council’s trading standards team had previously raided the offices and warehouse in September 2010, where they discovered fake gym kits, foot manicure products, hair combs and dry cleaning foams shipped from China.

The company was fined £52,000 in December 2011 and Memon was handed seven jail sentences of 15 months to run concurrently.

The cash, if recovered, will be paid to the Home Office's incentivisation scheme, which is shared between police and authorities to invest in fighting crime.