A COWBOY builder who targeted two elderly couples and conned them into paying for his shoddy or non-existent roof repairs has been jailed.

Gerald Johnson has also been barred from doing any form of cold calling or putting leaflets through letter boxes for five years.

His lawyer Sunil Khanna told York Crown Court he had "absolutely no qualifications" in any form of building or roofing work, though he had doing building work since he was a teenager.

Judge Simon Hickey said the 32-year-old had just finished a suspended prison sentence for similar crimes when he cold called a pensioner and his wife in the Selby area.

Within minutes of talking to the man, Johnson knew he was registered blind.

After he persuaded the couple to pay £500 for his "roof work" including taking the pensioner to a post office to get some of the money, Johnson conned a second elderly couple in Doncaster.

He defrauded them out of £1,380 with false claims of doing work on their roof and again, he took one of the couple to a bank to get the money.

“This was deliberate targeting of victims on the basis of vulnerability,” the judge told Johnson.

A qualified surveyor instructed by North Yorkshire trading standards had declared Johnson's "work" non-existent, shoddy or needed repairing.

Johnson, of Carlton Caravan Site, Lynwith Site, Goole, pleaded guilty to misleading commercial practices and fraud and was jailed for two years.

He was also made subject to a five-year criminal behaviour order stopping him cold calling anywhere in the country and banned from driving for three years.

For him, Sunil Khanna said he had tried to go on a bricklaying course last autumn but Covid restrictions had stopped him.

Johnson was from a travelling family and had had an interrupted education, leaving him with poor literacy skills.

He had been under pressure to provide for his five children and his elderly mother and father at the time of the latest offences.

The judge told him: "If you want to continue in this trade, you are going to need to make sure it is with qualifications and done in a legitimate way."

The hearing had been delayed by a couple of weeks so that Johnson could attend his father's funeral and deal with related matters.