‘Despicable’ conman jailed for ripping off pensioners
A COWBOY odd job man who bullied frail and elderly people into paying for overpriced work has been jailed.
Carlos Price, 46, targeted five people aged in their 70s and 80s, on their doorstep – and while they were shopping.
Manchester Minshull Street Court heard he used ‘aggressive’ sales tactics and badgered his victims into giving him cash for odd jobs at their homes.
A 76-year-old man handed over money for replacing a fence panel, only for Price and two accomplices to kick down the existing fence and walk off without completing the job.
A 77-year-old woman was driven to a cashpoint to get out £200 to pay Price to cut down some trees at the bottom of her garden.
But he dumped the pensioner at the roadside without carrying out any of the work.
Police discovered Price had 31 previous similar offences on his record.
He had previously thrown maggots in a prospective customer’s bathroom before charging her £780 to clear them.
Price previously served three years for scamming a 64-year-old man, who thought he was having ‘emergency repairs’ to his roof, out of £33,000.
Price, from Prestwich, sobbed as he admitted fraud and theft, claiming he squandered the money he made from his victims on cocaine.
Judge Angela Nield told him: “This was a string of despicable offences against vulnerable, elderly and often naive individuals sometimes far too trusting for their own good.
“This is wholly despicable. I have heard that you have an addiction, yet this cannot excuse this behaviour.”
The frauds were committed in May last year, four years after Price had come out of jail. Daniel Calder, defending, said: “He wants to offer his apologies to these victims. Following his release from custody in 2013, he did try to turn his life around. “He met his long term partner and did go through a period of sobriety, but be began struggling with a cocaine addiction, which replaced an addiction to alcohol. This followed from a death of a close friend. He was offered cocaine at the funeral and that led to the increase in consumption. “He does struggle to remember the details of the offences as he was under the influence of cocaine at the time. “He expresses his sincere remorse and he wants to change.”
He struggles to remember the details of the offences as he was on cocaine at the time Defence lawyer Daniel Calder