Jail Terms Cut for Gang who Ripped Off Local OAPs
| Published: 9th August 2007 16:36 |
Three tree surgeons who swindled elderly and vulnerable customers by grossly overcharging them for shoddy work, have had their jail sentences cut on appeal.
Albert Bowers, 46, Edward Simon Smith, 38, and Maurice Smith, 37, cold-called hundreds of residents across the south between 1997 and 2004 telling them trees in their garden were diseased and needed to be chopped down.
They hen tried to overcharge some customers, increased prices for others and in some cases barely did the work at all.
Prosecutor Stephen Parish QC, told London's Criminal Appeal Court: "If they could sense vulnerability or old age they exploited their victims by over-charging them or doing work that was not only unnecessary but positively damaging."
All three were convicted of conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to damage property at Winchester Crown Court last December. The court heard that the offences had been committed in Southampton, West End, Eastleigh, Winchester, Alton, Portsmouth, Basingstoke and numerous other locations in Hampshire, Berkshire and Sussex.
The court also heard how, on one occasion, they tried to charge £600 for 15 minutes' work, and on other occasions tried to charge more than £2,000 for a day's work.
In one instance that borders on the farcical, one resident was quoted a price of several hundred pounds to remove what the gang said was a dead tree. It was, in fact, a telegraph pole.
Bowers, the ringleader, of Berrybrick Close, Marchwood, was given a seven-and-a-half-year jail term while Edward Smith of Pottery Road, Bovey Tracey in Newton Abbot, Devon, and, Maurice Smith, of Attwood Close, South Ham near Basing-stoke, got four-and-a-half years each.
Last week however Mr Justice Eady, sitting with Lady Justice Hallett, cut 12 months off each of the men's sentences, after accepting that the original jail terms had been harsh compared with others who have been sentenced for similar offences.
Mr Justice Eady added that the length of their original terms was overly harsh on their families and that they had not used as much intimidation as he had seen in other cases.
The appeal court's decision left victims of the gang stunned. One of the victims said, "It sends out the wrong message that you can target people who are vulnerable, and yet the courts will still be lenient with you.''
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