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JAILED: Rogue Sedgley builder ripped off customers to fund gambling habit

Black Country builder Shane Rollinson took £51,000 off customers - despite barely being able to construct a wall.

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Shane Rollinson

A rogue builder who took £51,000 off customers despite barely being able to construct a wall properly has been locked up.

Victims of Shane Rollinson were left even further out of pocket having to put right his bodge jobs. They were onto a loser when they booked slapdash Shane and his firm S. Rollinson Brickwork because all he wanted was money to fund his gambling habit, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.

On one occasion he paid £12,500 to Gibraltar-based Coral Interactive, which runs the bookmaker in this country, just days after receiving £10,000 from a client.

The 30-year-old father-of-three, from Downfield Drive, Sedgley, turned up on site sporadically, constantly demanded more cash, charged too much for jobs he never finished and had such a poor standard of work that two of his customers had to pay an extra £17,000 and £4,000 respectively to put things right.

Shane Rollinson

Nathan Wright, who thought he was a friend of Rollinson, and his partner Naomi Campbell paid £8,000 cash and provided £2,000 worth of materials for a kitchen extension to their Bilston home. They ended up with a bill of £27,000 because he made such a mess of it.

Another couple booked him to construct a £26,000 extension to their Sedgley home after he told them he was an award-winning builder. But that boast quickly became a bad joke after work started on the ill-fated project on October 21, 2016.

Rollinson regularly asked for more and more money until he walked off the job.

Bungling builder Shane Rollinson

The little work he did was of such poor quality it cost the couple a further £4,000 to complete the project.

Rollinson conned another couple into choosing him to build a £10,000 wall around their home in Wombourne. They paid him £1,500 up front but he demanded more. The work was so dreadful that they had to dismantle it.

Rollinson admitted five charges of fraudulent and unfair trading and was sentenced to two years and two months in prison and banned for being a director for eight years. Judge Abbas Mithani QC told him: “You preyed on unsuspecting members of the public.”

'Award winning'

The court heard that Rollinson was a builder who described his work as “award winning”.

But he was anything but – and landed in court after a string of construction projects that left his customers thousands of pounds out of pocket.

He took advantage of people who mistakenly believed he could be trusted. Mr Mark Jackson, prosecuting, explained: “He is a rogue trader who conned unsuspecting customers into allowing him to carry out work on their properties holding himself and his company as being an award winning business with considerable experience.

Bodger builder Shane Rollinson left a £10,000 kitchen extension in Bilston looking like this

“These representations were false but enabled him to secure work from customers who would never have contacted him or his company if they had known what they were letting themselves in for. The work that he carried out, when he bothered to turn up, was of a very poor standard and was over priced.”

Mr David Cook, who booked him to construct a £26,000 extension to his family’s Sedgley home, said: “The effect on our lives has been shattering. Every time we turn into the house the poor state of the drive and the messy brickwork is a constant reminder of the nightmare he left us with.

"We have had to borrow £5,000 to try to put things right and are still in a state of despair.”

Mrs Hayley Bowen and her husband chose Rollinson to build a £10,000 wall around their Wombourne home.

The work was so bad Mr Bowen had to dismantle those parts that were in danger of falling down. Mrs Bowen concluded: “The defendant’s behaviour was despicable.”

Gambled

Mrs Kayla Banga handed him £4,000 towards a brick built summer house at her Sutton Coldfield property but he did no work and confessed he had gambled away all the money.

Mr Jon Roe, defending, maintained: “He has won awards for his bricklaying but he isn’t a builder. That is where he fell down, taking on jobs he should not have. He began to behave dishonestly but did not set out to do that. His customers trusted him and he let them down. Unfortunately he developed a gambling addiction and money was going out faster than it was coming in. This cost him everything.”

Rollinson conceded: “I made them all promises I could not keep to make them happy and deeply regret that.”

Another of his victims was Nathan Walker. They had grown up together and played for the same football team, so when Rollinson insisted he could build a kitchen extension he was given the job.

It was a big mistake because the ‘friend’ was a bodger desperate for money to pay off his gambling debts.

Forced to move

The £10,000 extension to the Bilston home of Mr Walker and his partner Naomi Campbell turned into a £27,000 calamity that saw her forced to leave the address with the couple’s young child.

They moved out of the house after angry sub contractors, who had not been paid by Rollinson, started calling to demand their pay at the family home despite not being owed money by them.

Rollinson left the job unfinished without explanation on August 30, 2017.

Five days later Mr Walker contacted Wolverhampton Trading Standards official Lee Jenks, who launched an investigation and employed leading chartered surveyor Derek Bate to check the project which was so badly constructed it had to be rebuilt.

Mr Bate concluded: “In view of the defects seen in the construction I consider the works undertaken have no value whatsoever and require complete demolition.”

Catalogue of faults

The catalogue of faults included the new walls not being adequately tied to the existing ones, wrong sized rafters and windows installed incorrectly, tiles not fixed to the roof and waste kitchen water discharged into an empty old bath the couple had to regularly empty.

Rollinson was supposed to start work on July 7, 2017 but did not appear on site until six days later.

The following day he asked for a further £1,000 which the couple reluctantly paid, followed by £1,510 more between August 1 and 17.

In all he received £7,610 in cash out of the original £8,000 with a further £2,322 worth of material and equipment provided for him by the couple who have subsequently been forced to fork out an additional £17,000 to put things right.

A source with knowledge of the case said: “It was supposed to be a simple three by two meter extension with them spending £10,000 on the build but it has cost them an extra £17,000 to correct the faults and ensure the structure was safe. Rollinson seldom turned up on site when he said he would and told lie after lie to cover up his non appearances.

He let them down time after time and changed his mobile phone number.

They had even supplied him with a mobile so they could actually speak to him but all he was interested in was getting their money in his pocket. “Naomi was forced to move out for a short time with their child to stay with a relative because of the threatening behaviour of sub contractors furious at not being paid by Rollinson and were demanding the family settle the debt when the payments were included in the money already given to the builder.”

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