Yahoo News Cowboy builder told to pay back victims or face jail
A cowboy builder has been told he has to pay his victims £30,000 or face a prison sentence.
Leon Pate fleeced six homeowners, promising to repair their homes or landscape their gardens but leaving them with piles of rubble and huge repair bills.
Over an 18 month period, Pate started work for six customers and took part payment for the work. However after beginning the renovations, he stalled and asked for additional payments.
Pate's first victim was a man who had moved into his first property following a divorce. He agreed to pay Pate £7,500 to landscape his rear garden, after finding him advertising on a local Facebook page as 'Build Landscapes'. Pate said he could complete the work between June 21 - June 29, 2021, and arranged a payment schedule.
The man paid a £1,500 deposit and on June 17, Pate visited the house with four men and a small digger. The men began digging the garden and left mounds of soil on the man's driveway, making it unusable. They said they would be back the next day to remove the rubble and begin laying paving - asking for £2,250 for materials.
After a month of trying to contact Pate, the man paid another trader £250 to remove the rubble from his drive. By October, the work had not been completed and Pate refused to give a full refund. Eventually, the man paid £10,500 to another contractor to carry out the work on his garden.
Pate's second victim found him on the website bark.com, advertising as 'Build Tech Lancashire'. The tradesman had previously carried out work to a family member's house without issue, but the woman was left with a garden which was unsafe for her children after paying out £2,500.
The woman left a one star review on the website, but Pate became aggressive, saying she had cost him £30,000 of jobs - demanding she take it down. When she refused, he said "the boys would get angry" if she did not pay. The woman was left with piles of soil against her fence and her children could not use the garden as it was unsafe.
The third victim was a 73-year-old widower who had moved into a bungalow after his wife had died. He intended to renovate the property and his daughter asked on Facebook for a tradesman to carry out work to teh roof and an extension. Pate agreed a price of £9,500 and removed the roof tiles, however he did not make the roof water tight.
The man provided a plastic sheet but it was not secured properly and kept blowing off, leaving the roof open to the elements. The man paid a total of £8,829 to Pate. However Pate claimed the roof was not sound enough to support the tiles he had ordered and asked for more.
When he did not return to the property the man visited Pate's home and found his ladders strapped to Pate's van. When he went to take them back, Pate's partner threatened to call the police.
When Pate agreed the contract was not working out, his victim expected a refund for incomplete works but despite numerous requests this has not been forthcoming. The condition the roof was left in caused additional damage to the property, which needs repairing.
A fourth man agreed a price of £4,850 for rendering work to be carried out in June 2023 but the work kept being stalled. He demanded extra money and said he would have to pull his workers off the job if the man did not pay. By the end of October he had shelled out more than £6,500 and was left with incomplete and substandard work.
That victim's neighbour saw scaffolding up next door and asked Pate to carry out roofing work on his home. Pate quoted £1,035 but some of the work was unnecessary and apart from some ridge tiles and slates, the work was of a poor standard.
Pate's final victim paid more than £10,000 for materials to landscape her garden, which never arrived. She has since been quoted £16,000 to rectify and complete the work.
At Burnley Crown Court, Judge Daniel Prowse agreed to defer sentence until December 6, 2024. However he said Pate would be facing a prison sentence if he did not repay his customers the money he owed them.
