A man, who a court heard, took over £1 million from homeowners leaving them with botched home improvements spent Christmas behind bars after being sentenced to three years on four fraud charges.
The conviction came after an investigation by the borough’s Trading Standards Team with most of his victims coming from Southwark.
Thirty-five-year-old Richard Nicholls from Hotspur Street in Shrewsbury was reported to the team at Southwark and is reported to have later told them that he had no formal building qualifications and his background was in fact in sales and real estate.
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The court heard that Nicholls had asked his customers to pay him up front for jobs and materials but then left them with unfinished extensions and other incomplete building work, which they had to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds correcting.
The judge called Nicholls’s scheme ‘dishonest’ from ‘the outset’ and said his claim of replying on others was not mitigation as the contract was with him.
Southwark Trading Standards investigation centred around the following:
- claiming works could be done to a competent and professional standard
- taking payment for goods and services that were never provided
- claiming to have capacity to take on specific projects
- failing to complete projects paid for
- claiming the cost of VAT on invoices when not registered for VAT
- failing to inform clients of their legal right to cancel contracts made at home
It is reported that he cost his eleven victims £1.1 million between 2016 and 2018 and was sentenced on Friday December 23 at Inner London Crown Court.
The court heard that a Camberwell couple were forced to sell their family home and leave London to pay back a loan they had taken out to correct botched building work.
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Councillor Dora Dixon-Fyle, Southwark Cabinet Member for Community Safety, said:“I am pleased that the Courts recognise the seriousness of the crimes Nicholls committed. The prison sentence also reflects the terrible impact his failures had on his clients.
“This case highlights how important it is for trading standards to tackle fraudulent behaviour, which too often impacts on vulnerable people.
“I congratulate our trading standards officers for their determination in bringing this man to justice and thank all involved in the investigation.”
The scale of the investigation was such that Southwark received support and funding from National Trading Standards (NTS), who also helped take witness statements from Nicholls’ many victims.
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Trish Burls, Chair of the National Trading Standards Tri Regional Investigation Team said: “Nicholls preyed on his victims under a veil of lies, false claims and deceit. He deliberately misled people into agreeing to home improvement works that he was not qualified to carry out, leaving victims distressed and out of pocket by tens of thousands of pounds.
“This sentence sends a clear message that, in the long-run, fraudulent trading does not pay – instead, it ends behind bars.
Nicholl’s, who is currently a Director of a Cheshire based estate agency company, promised to pay back all his victims, but has so far failed to do so.”
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