Families’ devastation after being ripped off by a conman builder
A BUILDER took tens of thousands from single mothers, NHS workers, and vulnerable families and left them with barely started work.
Victims of conman Morgan Lewis, 23, have now spoken about the pain he caused them and the huge sums of money they lost. He defrauded a total of 20 victims out of around £50,000.
Bridgend council, which prosecuted him, said he has not repaid any of the victims and as a result of his actions, people have been left in debt, lost money that was part of an inheritance and money that was taken from their pension funds.
Mandy Evans, 51 from Ceredigion was one of Morgan’s victims. He defrauded her of £14,500 to build 10 stables on her land.
“I was looking around for quotes and I asked my daughter if she could find somebody, and she said she found somebody on Facebook,” Mandy explained.
“It looked very professional, the pictures of all his work and the stables, they were fantastic.”
After speaking with Lewis, the pair agreed on a quote of £12,500, which increased to £14,500 with Mandy’s plans. Lewis explained he needed a third of the cost upfront, to cover the materials to get started.
“This was the beginning of January 2021,” Mandy said, “I said I’ve got to wait for planning, but he said if you don’t book now I won’t fit you in.”
So Mandy agreed and paid Lewis four and a half thousand pounds, and said she would inform him once the planning was agreed. Six months later, June 2021, the planning had been agreed and Mandy let Lewis know she was ready.
“He’d had this four and a half thousand for about six months, so I said right, we’re ready to go, planning is through, let’s get the stable block up and he just started making excuses.”
Lewis told her that his materials had been stolen and he would need more money to get going on the project. When Lewis finally arrived, Mandy explained he turned up with a large, mostly empty trailer.
“I said ‘you’re having a laugh, after having three-quarters of the money and arriving with that’,” she explained.
Lewis, however, had learned how to manipulate his victims, coming back to do just enough work to prevent them calling the authorities or thinking he was disingenuous.
When Mandy did raise her concerns to Morgan, he would reassure her. “It got to the point where he was saying ‘I swear on my unborn child, on my mother, I will not let you down but I need the money’,” she said.
After Lewis failed to finish the job,
Mandy’s husband and uncle had to build the stables themselves.
Several other encounters with Lewis from other victims echo a similar tale.
Natalie Treharne, 29, from Maesteg, also found Lewis on Facebook and had connections through colleagues. She and her husband contracted him to build a shed in their garden to help with storage.
Natalie’s daughter, aged 13, has a rare genetic disorder that requires a lot of equipment which currently takes up most of her room.
The circumstances were explained to Lewis, and the family had saved to get the shed build to help their quality of life.
“He said ‘yep, we can do all that for you’, just that we had to pay upfront for materials, so we gave a deposit,” Natalie explained.
Much like Mandy’s experience, Lewis then began coming up with excuses as to why he couldn’t work on the suggested days.
“He was always sick with mental health, or we’d get a message on the morning of the day and saying now one of the boys is sick, there was always a reason why he couldn’t come.
“I kept saying to him, this is Maisie’s money, she’s only 13, she’s got a rare genetic disorder and we’ve just got
equipment all over the house, her bedroom is full of boxes.”
The fact Lewis had been in her house and knew their circumstances made the situation upsetting for Natalie and her husband.
“He came into my house and he met Maisie, who’s in a wheelchair and a nonverbal child, and he said, ‘Oh, I can do this’ and sat and had a cup of tea with us, he said ‘don’t stress, I can do all this for you’. He was really believable.
“We gave him the majority of our money so we haven’t got around to getting another shed.”
Similar stories follow Lewis, with others taken advantage of and won over by his online portfolio.
Esther Guard, 44, from Carmarthenshire, found Lewis after researching online.
After liaising with a few other companies as well as Lewis, she finally settled on him and contacted him to build two stables.
“His page looked professional, there were good reviews and things like that. The price quotes are quite competitive, there were a few companies or trade people that gave me similar sort of quotes but I decided to go with him, mainly for the reason that I had been liaising with him the longest but also he was more local because he was based in Bridgend,” Esther explained.
Like Lewis’s other victims, he did initially begin the work, but excuses and errors soon followed.
“After paying the deposit, he turned up one more time when he was meant to start building the stables and you bought some of the timber. He spent about half a day maybe building the sails along with some friend.
“So he started building the frame, which later turned out was not the specification I asked for and secondly, it wasn’t the size I asked for, or the kind of size of the timber was wrong, it was all wrong basically and not what I asked for at all.
“Following that he never showed up again. He just came up and more and more excuses. asked for more money. After the first time he’d been because I thought, okay, well he’s been he’s done that bit, he’ll come back to do more work.”
However, Lewis’s excuses, illness, family emergencies etc. began coming through and left Esther down thousands of pounds, which she eventually asked him to return.
“It has made me feel extremely angry. “I think the worst of it is that none of the affected people have been able to get the money back.”
Anthony Bryant, 33, from Aberdare had to get involved after he realised his grandfather, who’s in his 80s, had been defrauded by Lewis.
Anthony had wanted to build a stable for his grandfather himself, but due to work commitments, it was decided that it would be easier to hire someone to do the work.
“He found him through Facebook, he was advertising work and showing stables, the work looked nice. He quoted him then £2,700, and I said it’s not bad, get it done because he’ll be able to do it sooner than I will.”
Lewis requested £1,400 upfront for materials cover, which was paid straight away. Weeks then went by however with no work being done.
“He couldn’t work he said, family issues, mental health problems, it was just excuse after excuse, probably about six seven months went by.
“He then got hold of my grandfather and said he’d drop some materials down and get started, but he would need another thousand pounds for materials again.”
Anthony was contacted by his grandfather and he told him to not pay, however Anthony later found out he had paid what Lewis requested.
Unable to reach Lewis, Anthony contacted him through his partner’s phone and set up a meeting pretending to need a job priced.
“He promised he’d give me the money back, he asked for a couple of days and I gave him my bank details and said I’d transfer it to my grandfather.
“He never had any intentions of paying the money back.”
Anthony reported Lewis and ended up building the stables himself.
In a case investigated by the Shared Regulatory Service and prosecuted by Bridgend County Council, Lewis pleaded guilty to 11 charges under the Fraud Act and 10 further charges under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.
Morgan Lewis was jailed for 16 months and an investigation under the Proceeds of Crime Act continues.
Judge Niclas Parry described Lewis as calculated, manipulative and sometimes aggressive.
The court was told that Lewis defrauded unconnected people including single mothers, NHS workers and a widow causing a loss of about £50,000. These people have not just lost money to him but then had to pay more money to get the work rectified or completed.
Welcoming the result of the prosecution, Dhanisha Patel, Bridgend council’s cabinet member for wellbeing and future generations, said: “The conclusion of this case sends out the clear message that trading practices such as these, which have resulted in our residents being ripped off, will not be tolerated.
“Anyone with concerns about rogue traders or seeking advice on finding reputable tradespeople, should contact the Citizens Advice Consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133.”