Jailed, the vanishing builder who left couple homeless
A COWBOY builder dubbed the Phantom who cheated customers by vanishing before completing the work on their homes has been jailed for two years.
One couple, Radcliffe and Nashreen Ogier, were made homeless and lost their life savings when Scott Devlin left their bungalow looking like a building site without a roof.
Devlin, 44, had been made bankrupt in 2013 but did not tell his victims and channelled their money through his nephew Craig Dunn’s bank account, a court heard.
He pretended that his nephew was an equal partner in his business and would ask customers to pay the money into Dunn’s account before it was transferred to him.
Birmingham Crown Court also heard that Devlin would convince customers to pay a large sum up front by telling them he needed to pay for building supplies or labour. But he would disappear leaving work unfinished. In total Devlin, from Tamworth, Staffordshire, made £43,335. Dunn, who was given a suspended sentence, made £18,535.
Devlin’s main victims were Mr and Mrs Ogier who owned a property in the Selly Park area of Birmingham.
In summer 2013 they wanted to expand their bungalow to turn it into a dream retirement home with enough space for Mr Ogier’s elderly mother.
Devlin was trading as Magical Kitchens and Builders and the couple, who found him on the internet, agreed to pay £160,000 for work to be completed by June 2014. But unknown to them Devlin was made bankrupt in November 2013.
In May 2014 he told the Ogiers there were brickwork and deliv- ery problems and the home was left to stand without a roof. Work later began again, but the couple had to pay £3,700 to an architect and structural engineer and borrow money to get the roof completed.
The house is still incomplete, and the couple have been forced to live with relatives and borrow money from them. In a victim impact statement, read out partially in court, Mr Ogier said: ‘I was really shocked to find out he was bankrupted.
‘I have no funds to finish [my house]. He has put us through so much and it will stay with us for the rest of our lives. I trusted him and he has let me and my family down. I trusted him with my life’s savings.’ Another victim, Stephen Marsh, agreed to pay Devlin £30,000 in 2014 for an extension to his Nuneaton home after his mother suffered a stroke. After six months, he was left with an empty shell and had to find new builders to re- do Devlin’s work. Mr Marsh’s wife Jenny said before the sentencing: ‘ I’m amazed and pleased they managed to track him down. My husband called him the Phantom. The work was awful and they left piles of rubbish all over the garden.
‘One day some people turned up to take the scaffolding away, saying it had not been paid for.
‘He took us to see some of his previous work but I don’t believe it was his now. Everything was a complete nightmare.’
Devlin was jailed after he pleaded guilty to one count of theft and five counts of fraud. Dunn, from Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, admitted two charges of acquiring criminal property and was given a 12-month jail term, suspended for 18 months. Judge Avik Mukherjee told Devlin: ‘Your crimes were flagrant, deliberate, prolonged and predetermined. They were directed towards hard-working, trusting members of the public. ‘In the case of Mr Ogier, over the course of one year you made repeated promises to him that you could not keep and did not intend to keep. ‘He put his life savings in your hands, and you repaid him by floating off with his money. ‘ He has been left with no money and homeless, living off the charity of his friends.’ The judge told Dunn: ‘You are prepared to accept you were extremely foolish, but you knew what you were doing.’
‘A complete nightmare’