‘I’m quite satisfied you deliberately were accepting work when you knew you didn’t have time to complete it’
Ian Wheeler
A rogue landscape gardener weaved a web of lies as he took almost £25,000 for work that was either disastrously shoddy or never carried out. Ian Wheeler, from Pontypool, was prosecuted by Torfaen council for criminal offences against customers in that county and nearby areas.
Cardiff Crown Court heard the 45-year-old left one garden resembling a “bog” and another in such a disastrous state it needed £20,000 worth of repairs. Clients were strung along with lies and requests for more money, in one case grappling with panic attacks in the nightmare’s aftermath. Another felt she had been “groomed”.
Wheeler’s company, Gwent County Construction Ltd, is no longer trading but the court heard he has recently been trading with a new firm and taking home around £52,000 a year as a subcontractor building a caravan park in Weston-super-Mare.
One couple from Pontypool had saved up for a year to avoid getting into debt when they paid Wheeler £4,000 to level their garden and install a patio and driveway.
As delays plagued the project, Wheeler lied to the couple that his bank account had been frozen and convinced them to part with a further £2,500 — yet the promised work still did not materialise.
Another couple, from Newport, were left with a £20,000 bill to fix Wheeler’s substandard job on their driveway. The court heard the saga led to them having to remortgage their property.
Wheeler abused the trust of another client by taking a £3,250 deposit for work he never carried out, even lying that he had ordered a glass balustrade for their garden.
The court heard he defrauded a Cwmbran customer who had paid a £1,400 deposit only to be offered a “litany of excuses” as Wheeler distributed her money from his business to various other accounts, including that of his on-off partner.
Clients were at times told to pay directly into his partner’s account, which Wheeler later said was an attempt to “support his own lies to clients about his accounts having been frozen”, said Judge Richard Kember.
Wheeler, of South Avenue in Pontypool, and Gwent County Construction admitted six offences of unfair commercial practices and one of fraud.
The tradesman, who in total took £24,920 from his victims, had six previous offences on his record including failing to stop at the scene of an accident.
His barrister James Evans said: “Mr Wheeler opened the business in 2014 and it was only in 2022 these issues arose. He is not somebody who set out to be a fraudulent person from the beginning. He did a good job for a lot of people and took pride in what he was doing.
“He had been part of a divorce, he suffered a bereavement which had an effect on him, and he suffered injuries including to his knee, which needed an operation.”
Mr Evans said these factors combined with Wheeler taking on too much work through Facebook led to him failing to “cope”.
Judge Kember told Wheeler: “I’m quite satisfied you deliberately were accepting work when you knew you didn’t have time to complete it.
“What a sole trader must never do is to take on new work and to take hefty deposits from new customers while knowing you will not be able to perform the work properly or within a reasonable timescale.”
Noting Wheeler’s “relatively lucrative” subcontracting income, the judge gave him two years and eight months to pay back all £24,920 he took from his victims.
The judge took into account Wheeler’s support network of loved ones and the probation service’s assessment that there was a realistic prospect of rehabilitation.
He imposed a jail term of six months suspended for 15 months, as well as 10 days of rehabilitation activity and 120 hours of unpaid work.
Judge Kember said he was prioritising compensation so imposed no prosecution costs or victim services surcharge.
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