Conman who charged OAP £10,000 to f ix fence gets 3 years in jail
A COWBOY gardener who conned elderly customers – charging a woman in her 70s more than £10,000 to fix a fence – has been jailed for more than three years. Benjamin ‘ Benny’ Brown, 62, targeted affluent pensioners for years and threatened those who questioned his exorbitant charges.
Brown was a former chairman of the Surrey Travellers Forum and had claimed travellers were targeted and ‘persecuted’ by councils and trading standards. He insisted that he and other travellers wanted to work hard to earn a living and did not live off benefits because they were ‘not that type of people’.
But in reality he was scamming vulnerable pensioners who could no longer care for their own gardens.
One woman in her 90s was charged £24,500 for maintenance work that should
‘They felt intimidated’
have cost just £400. Another retired woman paid £ 12,000 for landscape gardening despite Brown giving her a quote of around £5,000.
A woman in her 70s was charged £10,500 to fix her garden fence and gate. Brown said the bill was high because he had relaid her path and patio – despite the woman telling him she didn’t want the work done. Another customer paid £17,000 for work valued at just £200.
If elderly customers questioned his prices, 6ft Brown became aggressive and verbally abused them, Guildford Crown Court was told. He targeted pensioners in Surrey, Buckinghamshire and in the affluent areas of Richmond and Twickenham in southwest London.
He placed adverts in parish magazines for his firm, Greenfingers Gardening and Homecare Property Maintenance, claiming he had an ‘experienced and hard-working team’, adding: ‘ Gardening is our passion. No job too small.’
Brown, of Epsom, Surrey, earned £747,590 in the seven years from 2006 to 2012 – an average annual income of more than £106,000.
But he declared only £82,672 in total, meaning £ 664,918 went undeclared. Brown, who had no previous convictions, admitted eight counts of fraud and four of money laundering and was jailed for three-and-a-half years.
The judge, Recorder Christopher Critchlow, said he had been ‘grossly overcharging for doing gardening work for vulnerable people’.
‘It has also been said you did not have a charging policy, but rather you were looking for whatever you could get,’ said the judge.
‘A lot of your elderly and vulnerable victims said they felt intimidated, and that you were aggressive.’
Speaking in 2009, when he was chairman of the Surrey Travellers Forum, Brown railed against a council ban on doorstep selling. He said: ‘What do we do? Don’t go out and knock doors to try to get a living? Go and sign on the dole and then live off the State?
‘We don’t do that, we’re not that type of people, we like to go to work and earn a living.
‘I just think we’re being targeted, we’re being persecuted.’
The prosecution against Brown was brought by Surrey, Buckinghamshire and Sutton Trading Standards.
Richard Walsh, from Surrey County Council, said: ‘Brown charged excessive sums for poor quality work and intimidated customers who challenged him but thanks to the work of trading standards teams, he has now been made to pay for his crimes.’