Pretend gardeners operating in Dublin are “scamming people out of thousands”, an influencer has warned.
Marie Staunton first realised something was wrong when she got a call from a neighbour of her parents, raising a concern about the men in their garden.
When she got in through to her father, she quickly realised something was wrong.
“I eventually got my Dad [on the phone], who said there were guys doing the garden,” she recalled on The Claire Byrne Show.
“And I said, ‘What guys? Who invited them?’
“‘Oh, your Mum said she wants to make sure that you didn't have to do the taller things.’
“So, I then found out that she'd handed over quite a sum of cash and that they were coming back the next day to get even more.”
Ms Staunton decided she would wait in her parents front garden and confront them when they arrived.
“This fella rocks up in all of the best gear, I'm talking branded, really good quality gardening gear,” she continued.
“He came into the drive and he said, ‘I'm just going to go into the boss lady to make sure that I just want to get the rest of the money.’
“And I said, ‘But you did nothing yesterday.’”
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The man got “a bit agitated” but not aggressive, eventually turning on his heels to leave.
“He started to walk away from me, so I started videoing and I got the him on video, the reg of the truck from the day before and the car that he was going to get away in with the rest of the money,” Ms Staunton said.
“So, my warning is that arborists, tree surgeons and gardeners, they're so busy, they're not going around cold calling people - they don't have time to do that.
“They're out actually doing legitimate work, paying their tax.”
'Really emotional'
Afterwards, Ms Staunton posted a video about her family’s experience on Instagram and was inundated with messages from people who had experienced something similar.
“I'm really emotional about it,” she said.
“We're really good neighbors, but we really need to be keeping a close eye on what's going on in our neighborhoods.”
Tomorrow, Ms Staunton plans to report the incident to An Garda Síochána and urges anyone else who has experienced a similar scam to do the same thing.
“These guys and people like them are scamming people out of thousands, not just a couple of hundreds, not just a couple of hundreds,” she said.
Main image: A lawnmower. Picture by: Alamy.com.
