Caught on camera: Travelling conmen who netted countless thousands from elderly victims

David Price and his relatives lived on a caravan site in Brigg, North Lincolnshire, but travelled across Yorkshire and beyond, convincing hundreds of vulnerable people to part with cash for gardening or roofing which was unnecessary and often left unfinished.

Teesside Crown Court heard how they carried out a “pitiless search for different ways of fleecing old people” during a five-year campaign of offending on an “incalculable” scale which prompted the largest investigation ever conducted by North Yorkshire Council’s trading standards department.

Last night the council urged other fraud victims to come forward, revealing that, although more than 20 North Yorkshire residents were targeted in a single month by the Price family, only two reported their experience to officers.

Among those targeted was a 96-year-old woman living alone in the Humberside policing area, from whom Price snr stole £600 during a cold-call visit in June 2009.

She is registered blind and mistook Price for her own gardener until he started shouting at her, so loudly he was later confronted by a neighbour.

“When he started shouting, by God I got frightened,” she said. “He kept shouting ‘I want more money from you. I know you’ve got more money, I want more money’.

She added: “I thought ‘I hope he doesn’t clobber me because I don’t want to go to hospital’.”

An Oxbridge-educated former university lecturer, who has since died, paid the gang more than £52,000 for roofing work between January 2008 and February 2009.

“She was highly, fiercely independent,” her niece said after the court case, “had had a full working life in academia and latterly an immensely busy retirement which included a lot of international travel.

“But we can’t be armed against everything life might throw at us and in this instance she was ill-equipped to deal with the approaches and pressures applied to her. More than that, she didn’t feel she could ask for help at the time it was happening.”

The niece said the court case could not undo the “distress” the gang caused her aunt and others, but she said reporting of the fraud would raise awareness and vigilance.

An 85-year-old woman living alone paid the Prices and associate James Cunningham £14,400 in total between 2007 and 2009 for work which, according to a surveyor, would normally have cost £25 plus VAT.

She believed that she had been conned at the time but later told investigators: “The job was done. What could I do but pay up? Didn’t want to be in anyone’s debt.

“I’d rather pay somebody twice for something than be in debt to anyone... I didn’t breathe a word to anybody... I felt so stupid.”

Price snr, 42, who admitted conspiracy to defraud, theft and money laundering offences, was jailed for seven years and eight months.

His sons Abraham, 20, and David Jr, 19, were locked up for three years and eight months and three years and four months respectively for conspiracy to defraud and money laundering offences.

Price’s wife Angelina, 40, was jailed for 16 months for converting criminal property. His brother Shane, 41, received three years and four months for conspiracy to defraud and money laundering.

Cunningham, 26, from Castleford, West Yorkshire, was jailed for five years and four months after admitting conspiracy to defraud, burglary with intent to steal, and money laundering offences.

The court heard that David Price snr accepted his family was involved in the fraud through his instigation.

Judge Howard Crowson, told them: “This fraud involved a well-organised, planned and ruthlessly executed course of conduct.”

He told the defendants: “Your victims in this fraud were selected for their age, mental confusion or physical frailty because you knew that they would be easy targets for your deception but also because that type of victim is often reluctant or even incapable of making a complaint.”

North Yorkshire Council’s executive member for trading standards, Chris Metcalfe, said: “This has been a very complex and detailed investigation of a persistent and ruthless gang of organised criminals who deliberately targeted the most vulnerable members of our society.”