Legal News
Cowboy builder sent back to jail for breaching ASBO (15 April 2015)
Date: 15/04/2015
A cowboy builder who breached an antisocial behaviour order (ASBO) banning him from carrying out roofing work has been sent back to prison after he tried to start trading again weeks after being released.
Local publisher York Press reports that 24-year-old Donovan Ross Morley-Clough of Leeds Road in Selby defrauded disabled pensioners of thousands of pounds by carrying out work to their roofs.
He was sentenced to six months in jail at York Crown Court and was warned that the ASBO would remain in place to prevent him returning to “his old ways”.
In 2013, Morley-Clough was sentenced to four years in jail after being found guilty of a series of deceptions while working as a roofing contractor on properties in Selby, York and Wetherby.
After his release in February, he started trading again within weeks, however – but denied a charge of damaging a roof tile at a property he attended on 16 March. An elderly resident had become suspicious and called the police who arrested him on 18 March.
The court heard that Morley-Clough had restarted trading cleaning roof gutters – and had taken advice as to whether this would breach the ASBO.
His defence lawyer said that he now realised being self-employed had brought him into difficulty and added that Morley-Clough had an interview as a packer.
However, the Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst, said that the 10-year ASBO remained in place.
“If you break the antisocial behaviour order again, any sentence in court will be longer,” he told Morley-Clough.
The charge of damaging a roof tile remains on file.
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