THE Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is seeking to increase the prison sentence imposed on a Wrexham man following a terrifying late-night attack on a couple in their own home after which he hatched a plan to try and buy off his victim.

David Joseph Miller was jailed for six years for the aggravated burglary with a concurrent two-year sentence for conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Now the CPS has applied for an Attorney's Reference in a bid to get the case returned to court so they can seek to have the sentence increased.

Prosecution lawyers say the concurrent sentence means he had nothing extra for arranging to pay his victim £5,000 to change his story or not to give evidence.

And they feel six years jail was not enough to reflect his whole criminality.

Mold Crown Court heard last month how the lives of a company managing director and his then fiancee were turned upside down after they were terrorised in a late night attack.

Mr Gareth Evans had a knife held to his throat as he woke up in the early hours and was threatened as two raiders demanded cash. One of them then held a piece of wood with a nail in it - part of the bed that had broken in the struggle - against his throat to keep him on the bed.

The nightmare only came to an end when fiancee Wendy Lees was frog-marched by one of the burglars downstairs and was forced to hand over Mr Evans' wallet.

Mold Crown Court was told the raid had a devastating effect on the couple.

Ms Lees could no longer live in the house, it had to be sold, and the trauma of it all meant their relationship ended and their wedding had to be called off.

One of the raiders was Wrexham man David Joseph Miller, 28, of Pentre Gwyn, Wrexham, and while he was in custody awaiting trial, he and cellmate Lee Hine hatched a plan to try and buy Mr Evans off following the raid on his then home in Rackery Lane, Llay.

They offered him £5,000 during phone calls from prison, which were recorded.

When Hine was released, the first £2,000 was hidden in a supermarket trolley and handed over to Mr Evans at the Tesco superstore in Wrexham.

Mr Evans went straight to the police, a sting operation was set up, and when the next meeting was arranged, behind a fish and chip shop, police were waiting and moved in to make arrests.

Lee Hine, 31, and his girlfriend Sarah Holmes, 31, both of Ludlow Road in Bangor-on-Dee and Miller's sister Karen Miller, 27, of Coed Aben in Wrexham, also admitted their parts in the conspiracy.

Hine and Karen Miller - a mother of two - received 21 months and Holmes, said to be very much on the periphery of the conspiracy, was ordered to carry out 220 hours community punishment.

The second raider has never been arrested and is still at large.

David Miller refused to name him to police or to the court when the judge asked if he was prepared to do so.

Judge Huw Daniel said the aggravated burglary committed by David Miller was about a bad as it could be.

A CPS spokesman confirmed that an attorney's reference application had been made.