Nicola Lamb’s family say they know the true cost of rogue roofers after her elderly father was defrauded of more than £60,000 of his savings and died two years after the traumatic events.
Michael Cooper was the victim of a gang who first appeared on his doorstep offering to do roofing work. It then escalated into other jobs around the home, for which he ended up paying a total of £61,000 in cheques and cash.
When National Trading Standards came to the 84-year-old’s home in November 2023, to tell him he may have fallen victim to a scam by a gang they had been investigating, the shock appeared to change the course of his life.
The story emerged as Citizens Advice revealed that suspected roofing scams were the most common fraud dealt with by its consumer service last year, making up 10 per cent of goods or service complaints flagged as scams. One in four of all the roofing complaints it received in the same period were suspected scams.
Ms Lamb told The i Paper: “I lost my dad because of them (the gang), I was robbed of my dad.”
Her father was first approached by lead member of the gang Frederick Finney in 2021, offering to do roof repairs to his home in Barwick-in-Elmet, near Leeds in West Yorkshire.
After paying almost £30,000 for repairs that which were never carried, other members of the same gang started to appear at his home over the course of about 18 months offering to do work on his boiler and driveway.
When the family finally checked his chequebook, they discovered Cooper had paid out £61,000 to Finney and his associates.
National Trading Standards had been investigating Finney and caught him on CCTV cashing some of Cooper’s cheques at a bank. So they alerted the pensioner and his daughter to what was going on.
“He was so shocked,” Ms Lamb said. “He believed they had done work on his roof but he couldn’t go up there to check.”
‘Never the same person again’
The same week he was told of the scam, Mr Cooper had just received an early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, but was still living at home independently.
By the end of the week, he had fallen outside his local dry cleaners, broken his shoulder and ended up spending three months in hospital.
“When he came out of hospital, he was never the same person again”, said Ms Lamb. “The doctors did say that when you have had a big trauma like he did with the fraud, it can have an impact and it just changes everything.
“He never recognised his own home again.”
Lamb, a school welfare officer in Bradford, and her sister ended up having to get carers for their father and at the weekends, when they visited, he would have his suitcases packed asking to be taken home.
“He had been such an active man, he went to church every Sunday, he played snooker and billiards every week”, she said. “He ended up just sitting in his chair every day.
“He couldn’t even work the TV remote. It’s not just about the fraud, it’s the after-effects we had.”
‘I blame the fraudsters’
Among the knock-on effects of the scam was the freezing of the pensioner’s bank account, which left Ms Lamb and her sister having to cover their father’s costs while they tried to sort out his finances.
Mr Cooper’s health deteriorated rapidly and he died in October last year at the age of 86.
“I will never know how much of this was the effects of the Alzheimer’s but I blame him (Finney) for losing my dad”, his daughter said.
Finney along with 21 others, who was part of the same criminal operation pressurising homeowners to pay inflated prices for unnecessary or poor-quality roofing, were sentenced at Teesside Crown Court in September.
Twelve were given jail sentences amounting to a total of 63 years and three months.
Finney, 48, from Bickerton, West Yorkshire, was sentenced to six years and nine months in jail after pleading guilty to conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to convert criminal property.
The network had extracted more than £1m from victims for unnecessary, poor-quality and grossly overpriced work between May 2021 and August 2024 and had also been involved in money laundering. It followed a major investigation by the National Trading Standards Yorkshire and Humber Regional Investigation Team, hosted by City of York Council.
Citizens Advice found fraudsters used doorstep sales tactics in three quarters (77 per cent) of suspected roofing scams, making it the most common method deployed to catch homeowners out.
These scams were part of almost 9,000 roofing-related complaints received by the charity’s consumer service – equivalent to one every 13 minutes.
How to avoid rogue builders
Check if the trader is genuine
Be wary of anyone offering to deliver unsolicited work, either by knocking on your door or calling you on the phone. Ask for references and make sure you get everything in writing, including details of any work you agree.
Gather evidence
If there’s a problem caused by a trader, you should be able to get it fixed or get some money back. Gather paperwork and receipts, take photos to use as evidence, and make notes about what’s happened – including times and dates.
Know your rights
Your rights will vary depending on your situation. If a trader is at your home when you agree to roofing work, you have 14 days to cancel. The trader has to give you the information about your right to cancel in writing. If a trader hasn’t done a good job with “reasonable care and skill”, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 entitles you to ask for the problem to be fixed or for a refund.
Contact the Citizens Advice Consumer Service to report a problem or if you need more help.