Family of fraudsters preyed on frail and elderly

A FAMILY of rogue traders made an “incalculable” fortune by conning elderly victims across Yorkshire and beyond into paying for needless gardening and roofing work.

Travelling fraudster David Price and his relatives will be sentenced today after they toured the region looking for vulnerable customers, many of whom were disabled and in their 80s and 90s.

Wearing matching clothing and driving vehicles bearing company logos, they created an “illusion of professionalism” during a five-year campaign of doorstepping and cold-calling, Teesside Crown Court heard yesterday.

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But they had no expertise and overcharged their customers or left jobs undone, returning to target trusting victims again and again, even while on bail.

They were arrested and charged following the largest investigation ever conducted by North Yorkshire Council’s trading standards and planning department.

At least 81 victims have been identified relating to payments totalling more than £175,000, but the true scale of the crime is believed to be much greater.

Prosecutor Neil Davey QC said: “The true number of victims of this long-running conspiracy and associated money-laundering operation, and the true amount of money defrauded, is literally incalculable.”

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The court was told Price had previous convictions for dishonesty dating back to the 1980s and had “never paid a penny tax in his life”.

Even after he had been arrested and had his bank accounts frozen, he persuaded friends and relatives to open accounts in their names to receive the proceeds of his criminal enterprise.

The family targeted “a large number of elderly people in North Yorkshire”, but also claimed victims in West, South and East Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire.

“The nature of the family fraud business introduced the conspirators to huge numbers of people over much of the country,” Mr Davey said. “Sometimes they did a reasonable job, for a fair price, with which the customer was happy.

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“But their exposure to so many customers enabled them to identify the soft touches – the old, the forgetful, the confused, the senile, the easily bewildered and the easily frightened.

“Such customers were overcharged mercilessly. Those identified as suitable targets were visited again and again, and overcharged again and again.

Details of 19 cases were heard in court but Mr Davey said they “do not even represent anything like an exhaustive list of the people who we know were defrauded”.

He added: “We shall never know just how many victims there were and of how much money they were defrauded. That is because the conspirators always tried to ensure payment in cash if possible.

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“Many people didn’t even realise that they had been defrauded until something happened – unexpectedly going overdrawn, for example – to bring it to their attention.

“And there must be many people who to this day do not realise that they were dishonestly overcharged.”

The family’s victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons, included an Oxbridge-educated university lecturer, who lived in the Humberside policing area and has since died.

She had been “repeatedly and mercilessly targeted” and wrote cheques for reasons she later could not recall.

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“When younger she must have had one of the finest minds of her generation,” Mr Davey said, but her mind became “less sharp” and she “found it more and more of a struggle to manage her affairs. David Price could not have asked for a better victim,” Mr Davey told the court.

Another victim was an 89-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer, who lived on her own in a bungalow in the Humberside area. She was, Mr Davey said, a “classic victim of the conspiracy” as “her mental deterioration was so bad that she had no idea why she wrote out the cheques she did”.

An 85-year-old woman, who also lived alone in the Humberside area, was defrauded of a total of £14,400 by the Price family and their friend, James Cunningham.

An expert who later inspected her home found the only work undertaken was “one square metre of wholly inadequate re-pointing to a wall”, a job that would properly cost £25 plus VAT.

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A 96-year-old woman, from the Humberside area and registered blind, handed £600 to Price after he shouted at her so loudly that her neighbours confronted him.

Another victim, an woman , 83, whose 86-year-old husband suffered from severe dementia, made payments for work on their house even after they had moved out of it.

The couple’s financial adviser found “both before and after moving into sheltered accommodation (she) had been making payments for gardening work at what used to be their home totalling over £23,000,” Mr Davey said.

Cunningham had also admitted burgling a 99-year-old woman’s home in West Yorkshire last November. He was caught on a camera installed in her home because of similar burglaries in the past.

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Price, 42, of Mill Lane, Brigg, North Lincolnshire, pleaded guilty at a previous hearing to conspiring to defraud, theft and money laundering offences.

His sons Abraham and David Jr, 20 and 19, and brother Shane, 41, have all admitted conspiracy to defraud and, along with his wife Angelina, money laundering offences.

Cunningham, 26, of Wood Lane, Castleford, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud, burglary with intent to steal, and money laundering offences.

All six are due to be sentenced today.

A seventh member of the conspiracy, a girl aged 17 who cannot be named for legal reasons, is subject to a six-month referral order after admitting two counts of attempting to convert criminal property and another of attempting to conceal criminal property.

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