A cowboy builder extracted an extra £3000 out of an elderly victim by threatening to pour cement down her drains.
Scumbag Benjamin Brown was jailed as part of a massive operation to con vulnerable pensioners out of their hard-earned cash.
One of the traveller’s many victims was 72-year-old Pauline Barnsby, who ended up paying almost £5000 for only a couple of hundred pounds worth of work.
Evil Brown, 62, initially quoted the septuagenarian £1,200 to fix her garden fence and path – but he whacked the price up to £4,200 after shoddily completing the work and badgered the frail old woman until she paid.
Pauline, of Epsom, Surrey, was one of many elderly victims of Brown, who is currently serving three and a half years in jail.
She was targeted by Brown in February 2012 when she was quoted £1,200, to have her fencing and garden paving re-done, but the con-man more than trebled the cost to £4,200.
Brown, of Epsom, was jailed in October after pleading guilty to eight counts of fraud and four counts of money laundering.
Pauline said: “I said I wanted to get another quote, but he just said, ‘No, I can start now’.
“I said, ‘don’t do it, I’ll get somebody else’, but he said, ‘I have already started’. He was just very aggressive and nasty once he started the job.”
During Brown’s trial, Guildford Crown Court heard how anyone standing up to the bully to challenge his costs, would be met with threats and aggression.
Fearful Pauline said: “You get threats that he would put cement down the drains and block it all up.
“Being by myself I was scared.”
Brown, who is a member of the travelling community, failed to tell the taxman about earning a whopping £665,000 and targeted victims between 2006 and 2012, from across London and Surrey.
Pauline was even forced to ask a neighbour to re-fit her fence after Brown’s shoddy work came down.
The paving on Pauline’s driveway is also cracking just four years after Brown carried out the work.
She said: “He just left a mess we had to clear up.
“Then he stood at the door, quite aggressive, demanding his money: ‘I will stay here until you give it to me’.”
Pauline expressed her relief that the cowboy gardener is now behind bars.
She said: “At the time I didn’t know what to do.
“You’re embarrassed to say what the money is really for because you’re a mug, aren’t you?
“When I saw it in the paper I thought, ‘Thank God he has been caught’.”
