A COWBOY builder admitted deception when he appeared in court.
Crosswell Alan Barton was sentenced to three months in jail suspended for two years.
Mr Barton was also fined £500 for knowingly making a false trade description, ordered to pay costs of £2,617 and compensation of £4,500.
He was trading under the name of Simply Roofing when the offences were committed in late 2011.
The deception offence was committed when Mr Barton dishonestly obtained £4,250 from his victim by falsely representing that roofing work listed in a quotation had been completed. In fact it had not been completed.
Mr Barton made the false trade description when he placed an advertisement in a local paper stating that Simply Roofing was established in 1985, whereas in fact the business was established in November 2011.
An independent expert witness stated that the work that Mr Barton did undertake at his victim’s home address was ‘to a standard significantly below what we would reasonably expect of a competent tradesman’ and was of the opinion that all the work undertaken required attention given the ‘poor workmanship’.
Barton was brought to justice after an investigation by the Office of Fair Trading’s trading standards department.
More on this story in this week’s Manx Independent - in shops from Thursday morning.
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