Woman 'loses £200,000' after being victim of 'rogue builder's scam'

A vet has shared her story of losing £200,000 in a rogue scam.

Jessica Reader lost the huge sum after hiring a builder who did not deliver the work she had asked for.

Reader, a veterinary surgeon from Wenvoe in Vale of Glamorgan, came across an advert in a local paper back in 2022 for Michael Anderson, a builder.

He claimed to have been in the construction trade for over 50 years, and Reader hired him to build an eco-home on land belonging to her parents near the town's golf club.

Anderson, 76, gave Reader a quote of £131,000 after she had made clear her budget of £70,000, convincing her to pay the extra cash.

Instead of the home she had expected, Anderson built a shell of a building, which had a sagging roof where water sat in the centre.

The project remained at this stage for months, with Reader beginning to suspect after some time that Anderson would not be back to finish the job.

She told : "He seemed so nice, genuinely. He was like a grandfather-type figure. Very warm and had an answer for everything. He also came across as having a fantastic knowledge of planning matters, which I didn't, so I decided he was the perfect person to build my home."

Reader obtained planning permission for the home in summer 2023, but suffered a breakdown in October of that year after Anderson repeatedly made excuses to avoid finishing the job.

She continued: "He had this charming way about him. He was an expert in kicking things down the road again and again. He told me four times he had Covid, then it was the weather, then he couldn't get the labour. But towards the end he just stopped answering my calls and I realised that was it. He'd taken off with my money and wasn't going to build my home."

"I broke down. I still remember the date and the time vividly in my head. It was a feeling of sheer helplessness. I had trusted him and yet he had taken everything I had saved including inheritance money. Why did I pay this person all that money? Well I'm not involved in that world and there was no way I expected to be scammed by him."

Following her experience with Anderson, Reader dropped out training she was completing at the time in order to focus on a different field.

This was because she felt she could not concentrate well enough to work in complex operations.

In her darkest moments, she shared that she had wished she was not alive, and said she would currently be homeless if she weren't able to live with her parents.

"I hoped at the time my emotional breakdown might be fatal. It was only my sense of such rage which got me through this and motivated me to carry on. I have suffered from rage like I have never felt throughout this whole episode in my life. It was that which made me committed to getting justice for what he did."

Reader was soon contacted by Andrew and Denise Fitzgerald, who had also fallen prey to Anderson and were trying to find others to make a case against him.

Andrew said: "I'd heard of a property in Wenvoe which Anderson was working on and I found out it was Jessica through the Vale's planning portal online. It became easy enough to find out who might have been targeted in the same way we were."

The Fitzgeralds had moved to Porthcawl to spend their retirement by the sea and live closer to family, paying Anderson to demolish a bungalow and build a new home in its place.

He had shared his planning permission credentials with Andrew and Denise and gave them a quote of £219,500 excluding VAT in 2019.

Yet new build homes are exempt from VAT and Anderson was not registered to charge the tax in any case.

His first invoice to the Fitzgeralds was for £83,000 including £13,833 VAT.

After completing very little work, Anderson raised the total price, though an independent surveyor found no more than 40% of the promised work had been done.

That work included a sagging and rotten roof which was threatening to fall in.

Anderson had also failed to pay contractors, leading to the Fitzgeralds paying extra directly to workers when they told them they had not received their cash.

Denise said: "He was telling us we can get a discount and a warranty if we pay everything through him but he was pocketing it."

Anderson appeared at Cardiff Crown Court on Monday charged with four counts of fraud and one count of dishonesty by false representation.

His wife Sandie Anderson, 66, was charged with possession of criminal property for a bank account she owned which had taken receipt of £35,000 her husband obtained fraudulently.

The court was told Anderson took at least £263,000 from customers he had scammed but cannot not afford to pay this sum back.

Anderson was jailed for three years and six months, at least half of which will be served in custody.

Sandie Anderson was jailed for 18 weeks suspended for 12 months, while she must also wear an electronic tag preventing her from leaving home between 7pm and 6am.

Judge Eugene Egan said the defendants left a "trail of misery and caused "decent and hardworking people emotional and financial distress.

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