A builder scammed 30,000 pounds (34,806 euros) from a British couple in their sixties after being hired by the couple to renovate their bungalow in the United Kingdom, according to the British media outlet BBC.
The couple paid Christian Williams, 54, 50,000 pounds to carry out the work in their apartment, but discovered that the builder was spending the more than 34,000 euros in Lanzarote.
The nightmare began when one night, one of the walls of the house began to wobble when pushed. That night, the rain started to leak and form drips. "I got up in the middle of the night collecting water in buckets while trying to look after my husband. I didn't have enough buckets and I cried constantly, it was a nightmare," she recounts.
"We paid the first installment. The work started and then it just stopped," explains Shelley Sawkins. "Then we saw he was in Lanzarote on holiday with our money," she continues.
Furthermore, she says that the builder "would disappear for weeks and then come back with excuse after excuse."
During the time the supposed work lasted, they discovered that the builder never went himself, but sent other workers whom the woman described as "elderly and apparently unqualified to do much of the work."
Despite this, the scammer pressured the couple for more payments because he claimed that things would go faster that way. However, the couple discovered that in the case of the folding doors, the suppliers never received the money, so they did not deliver them. Because of this, the couple had to pay for this material again.
This has not been the only scam this builder has committed, as three other families also filed a complaint with the authorities against Christian Williams. The builder is currently serving a two-year prison sentence after admitting to theft of money and three counts of fraud by false representation.