2 months ago
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A cowboy builder who conned more than 50 families out of thousands of pounds wrecked a married couple's 'forever home' after they allegedly found him on Checkatrade.
Danny Thorn, 51, and his wife Cindy Gilmore, 53, from Southampton, claimed they found conman Lawrence Martin on the website that promises to find 'vet and monitor' tradespeople.
But what should've been six weeks of easy work turned out to be four months of hell, after Martin, who was found to have no building qualifications, left the downstairs of their house in a pile of rubble and dust.
The couple wanted to knock a wall down along with some other jobs such as fitting fireplace mantels and new skirting boards and radiators and were quoted £12,000 for the works.
After he started days after accepting the job in February 2018 via his company at the time, LM Maintenance, 'not a lot happened after that'.
Martin told Mr Thorn that he would be able to get a discount if he paid the money upfront, something he told other victims.
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Danny and Cindy's living room was left in a state for months, leaving them unable to use their living room or kitchen
Danny Thorn, 51, and his wife Cindy Gilmore, 53, from Southampton, claimed they found the conman on Checkatrade
What should've been six weeks of easy work turned out to be 4 months of hell, after Martin, who was found to have no building qualifications, left the downstairs of their house in a pile of rubble and dust
The downstairs of Cindy and Danny's living room
On February 23, after admitting two counts of fraudulent trading and one of fraud, Martin showed no remorse as he was caged for five years
'He stupidly convinced me to pay in advance for some of the works to get a discount. The work should've taken six weeks but it took three to four months,' Mr Thorn told MailOnline.
'At the end I was trying to get money back off him because they just hadn't completed works they were supposed to have completed. I've done a lot of the work and sourced the materials.'
Mr Thorn asked for £5,000 of the £12,000 back, which he never received, but he estimates that he has spent a further £5,000 on materials and fixing the mistakes made by Martin and his crew.
On February 23, after admitting two counts of fraudulent trading and one of fraud, Martin showed no remorse as he was caged for five years for scamming dozens of families out of thousands of pounds.
Martin will serve half of his sentence before being released on licence.
Mr Thorn, who now works in traffic management, used to be a carpenter and ended up doing a lot of the work himself, adding extra strain onto the family.
'It was stressful. The ground floor is all open plan so although the work wasn't in the kitchen, the kitchen was difficult to eat in because of the dust and mess, he told MailOnline.
The distraught couple were left scrimping and saving for another year to make back the money that they lost by hiring the conman
Mr Thorn ended up having to finish a lot of the work himself, after Martin did not clear up his mess
Mr Thorn, who now works in traffic management, used to be a carpenter and ended up doing a lot of the work himself, adding extra strain onto the family
The 'fundamentally dishonest' 36-year-old pressured clients into paying tens of thousands of pounds in deposits to ensure work could begin
'It was difficult because [my wife and I] were both trying to work and [it put] a lot of strain onto the relationship [and] the home generally. An incredibly disruptive three or four months.'
Ms Gilmore said: 'It was a horrific time, a horrible time. We bought this house and loved it and we just decided we wanted to make a few adjustments to it to make it the home we wanted to live in forever.
'I felt like Lawrence just came in and trashed our house so I was really hurt and upset when it happened, as well as all the financial implications.'
Mr Thorn also claimed Martin and his team had installed fireplaces at the wrong height, posing a fire risk, adding another job to the list of things he had to fix.
Ms Gilmore said: 'The reason we paid someone to do it is because we didn't want to do it. We're both busy, working full-time and it was a lot of work.
'We didn't want to give it time because time is precious.
'We found him on Checkatrade and we thought that would be a good place to go, but he never should've been on there.'
It was heard in court that Martin 'took advantage' of vulnerable customers including one woman who was having work done to help her dying father-in-law.
The 'fundamentally dishonest' 36-year-old pressured clients into paying tens of thousands of pounds in deposits to ensure work could begin, before declaring more work needed doing as costs soared.
One couple lost more than £110,000 as a result of his fraud, while dozens of heartbroken victims were left with wrecked homes and empty bank accounts as their life savings were cleaned out in a campaign of fraud that lasted a 'very long time'.
Mr Thorn asked for £5,000 of the £12,000 back, which he never received, but he estimates that he has spent a further £5,000 on materials and fixing the mistakes made by Martin and his crew
The living area was left looking like a building site with the family having to walk to the garden room for some peace and quiet
Mr Thorn said the team that Martin hired was inexperienced and put pine filler on their oak flooring
The couple lost thousands of pounds after Martin told them to pay upfront for a discount
Cindy and Danny spent most of their time confined to the garden room while it was snowing, because of Martin's shoddy work
Danny and Cindy, who live with their teenage son, said they were forced to spend the majority of their time in their garden room as the Martin left the downstairs of their house in a mess.
Mr Thorn said: 'Luckily I'd built a garden room and we were basically living in it because the ground floor of the house was just an absolute mess because there was a load of rubble everywhere, dust, it was just horrendous. It was snowing as well.
'Otherwise we would've been confined to the bedrooms.'
Ms Gilmore added: 'It was awful, I mean it was snowing at one stage. We basically had no downstairs that we could use, we couldn't have the heating on.
'We never really knew what we'd be coming home to after a day's work. Although Danny was working at home, he wasn't home all the time, he couldn't check on them 24/7.'
The fraudster had his team put up black guttering when the house had white, use pine filler on their oak floors, fit the wrong skirting boards and attempt to fit radiators of different sizes into the living room.
At one point Mr Thorn witnessed one of the workmen attempt to sand their oak floor manually with a piece of sandpaper. He then had to splash out and hire out a specialist machine himself.
'Lawrence did come back once and I sat down with him and went through all the stuff that needed sorting out and he goes "we'll get it sorted" but he never did,' Mr Thorn said.
'There was one meeting and lots of empty promises that came back and it got tenser and tenser towards the end.'
'Initially he came round quite a bit and was always calling to give me excuses as to why things weren't happening or what the next delay was, but that decreased.
'He was quite charming the first time he came around. Very full of himself and confident.
'He made out he'd been in the building trade for years.
'He rocked up in a new Volkswagen Golf, funnily enough after we paid him the first lot of money. He pulled up outside and said "look at my new car".
'He had a bit of a swagger about him and as we got further in then he became a bit more timid.'
Mr Thorn said Martin got very brash as time went on and 'kept trying to blame me for things going wrong,' along with saying that he kept 'changing his mind'.
Ms Gilmore also said she found him 'intimidating' to be around when her husband was not there.
The distraught couple were left scrimping and saving for another year to make back the money that they lost by hiring the conman.
'The work wasn't finished so we had to wait and save up money. Not only did we lose a lot of money but we had to save up money to try and repair some stuff that needed completing and that took a while,' Mr Thorn said.
Mr Thorn put in a court claim to get his money back, but he said the business had been dissolved and therefore was not only out of £5,000, but he lost an additional £600 in court fees.
'I put in the court claim and literally found out that they'd [dissolved the company] before my claim went in. So I lost 600 pound on that as well,' Mr Thorn said.
Mark and Chrissie Bacon had dreams of converting their garage so Mr Bacon's dying father Richard could spend his final days with them and his grandchildren
Mark and Chrissie were scammed out of £44,000 in what was a 'nightmare of stress'
A pile of rubbish and mess left outside the Bacon's home
Richard Bacon died waiting for the garage conversion to be complete
Chrissie and Mark's house after Martin's shoddy and poor work
Damage and poor work at customer Chrissie and Mark Bacon's home that Lawrence Martin worked on
Along with being jailed, Martin was also made subject of a 10-year Criminal Behaviour Order, barring him from any kind of building or roofing work.
But he will be allowed to practise as an electrician upon his release.
Mark and Chrissie Bacon had dreams of converting their garage so Mr Bacon's dying father Richard could spend his final days with them and his grandchildren.
But Mr and Mrs Bacon, 61 and 53, said they never got the 'opportunity to give him that end we hoped to give him' because Lawrence Martin conned them out of £44,000 in what was a 'nightmare of stress'.
Mark was estranged from his father for 20 years and the pair had recently reconciled before he passed away.
There was even a stand-off on the day of Richard's funeral, which saw Martin 'shouting and screaming' at Chrissie.
Meanwhile Martin was also targeting Sharon Netley and partner Paul Harris for a £92,000 job. His work was so bad they had to spend another £22,000 remedying his appalling efforts.
MailOnline was also sent images of his Instagram posts, which show Martin bragging about luxury sports cars, lavish holidays and expensive electronic goods - all while some of his victims were forced to take out loans to make ends meet.
Checkatrade has been contacted for comment.
