An elderly pensioner living alone with a son who has special needs was scammed out of €8,000 by a fraudster who failed to fix a leaking ceiling. 

While there has been a lot of focus in recent years on online scams, An Garda Síochána has released figures that reveal there was a 43% increase in people reporting bogus tradesman last year. 

For The Claire Byrne Show, one victim with “very limited funds” spoke to Josh Crosbie about how a leak in her ceiling cost her thousands. 

“It was never resolved,” she recalled. 

“I had to keep calling them back six, seven, eight times until eventually they disappeared off to face the earth. 

“At that stage, I had spent €8,000 on the remedial work that needed to be done. €8,000.”

The woman, who wishes to remain anonymous found him online and believed that he had “extremely good credentials”. 

She borrowed money from a money lender to pay him, but only one week after he ‘fixed it’, the leak started all over again. 

“I found it very hard to call him back,” she continued.

“I'm asking to come back to the house; there was real problems and I was worried every night that it was lashing rain.

“The ceiling was leaking and eventually he disappeared off to face the earth.”

The woman described the stress of the situation as “just incredible”. 

“If it rained, I was I couldn't sleep in the nighttime,” she said. 

“Finally, my brother helped me out and we got it sorted - just not the way it was, not back to its original state. 

“But look, the leak stopped and I could sleep nights.” 

Garda warning

Speaking to Newstalk, Sergeant John Fitzpatrick of Bray Garda Station warned that fake tradesmen often used bad weather as an excuse to offer to carry out work. 

“Unfortunately, they give an opportunity for unscrupulous people, criminals to call to people and say, ‘Look, do you realise you've got damage to your house?’ - whether there's damage or not,” he explained. 

“And you give them an opportunity to carry out work on your house, whether you want to or not.”

Sergeant Fitzpatrick added that many of these people are “clever” and will leave professional looking leaflets around an estate. 

It means vulnerable people are often tricked into thinking they are respected professionals.

“I'm talking about tens of thousands of euro - certainly, thousands of euro being handed over to people,” he said. 

“Unfortunately, we do see circumstances where people might not have the money at the time and then they call back at another day to say, ‘Well, don't worry, we'll call back and get the money.’

“And if you don't have it, then if there have been cases where they do bring vulnerable people to an ATM and withdraw large sums of money.”

Main image: An elderly pensioner holding a wallet. Picture by: Alamy.com.