Joseph Gardener, 35, pleaded guilty at Teesside Crown Court last week to nine counts of fraud for the poor quality of half-finished work he undertook between 2019 and 2020.

Throughout the hearing the court was provided with an alarming list of evidence and repetitive stories of the tradesman receiving advanced payments for work and materials, only for him to never return to the job or leave it blatantly half-finished with endless amounts of excuses given to his customers.

In the tsunami of lies he would tell his customers as to the reason why he could not come back to their homes to complete the work he had already accepted payment for, the most abhorrent excuse was a fictitious cancer diagnosis.

Teesside Crown Court

As reported by the Mail, he left one customer with tiles falling off his roof onto the shared driveway; another with a hole in his bedroom ceiling; another was forced to go up onto his roof in the middle of the night during a storm, after the tarpaulin came off his roof.

Other victims were left with problems including a roof that encroached onto the neighbour's property by 12 inches; water damage to bedrooms after Gardener left a home without a roof on for a month; and third party workmen turning up asking for payment when Gardener had already been paid for the job.

The court heard details of Mr Gardener’s personal life and circumstances that his defence lawyer argued needed to be taken into consideration in sentencing to further understand the mental state of his client.

It was revealed Mr Gardener had taken over his father’s roofing business following his death in 2018 - a situation that emotionally the tradesman had not been coping well with and was a key factor that led him to make poor decisions.

Judge Anthony Hawks spared the 35-year-old jail but ordered him to repay half of what he had been paid - £12,350 - in monthly payments to his victims.

The judge handed Gardener a nine month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months and an order with a 30 day rehabilitation requirement.

The judge said: 'None of your customers are people of significant means. You, through a mixture of fraud, dishonesty and incompetence woefully abused your customer's trust’, as reported by the Mail.

(H/T Daily Mail)

Feature Image Credit: Daily Mail