A builder conned a pre-school out of thousands of pounds after claiming he couldn’t finish their playground because he was getting cancer treatment.
Michael Rylands, from Sandwich, Kent, would convince trusting clients to pay for building work in advance before fleeing and leaving a mess in his wake.
When confronted, he thought he could use a fake cancer diagnosis as a ‘get out of jail free card’ or tell clients his bank had been ‘frozen’.
He failed to install a climbing frame at a pre-school in east Kent after offering to carry out the work at a discounted rate.
He was paid £6,000 upfront and even cleared a small area of the site but never finished the job. The climbing frame he claimed he had ordered, never arrived.
When confronted about the incomplete work, Rylands told the pre-school staff he was receiving treatment for cancer and was unable to finish the job.
Another builder hired Rylands to fit some windows as part of an office renovation project and he was paid £3,000.
The windows were never delivered nor installed. Rylands claimed they had been stolen.
In July 2020 a woman paid Rylands £2,000 for a bathroom renovation. When the woman received an anonymous email warning her about his offending, she challenged Rylands and asked for the money back. He lied telling her his bank account had been frozen.
Another victim reported a similar experience for their ensuite bathroom with lost funds and incomplete work. They also noticed their own tools and cash had gone missing from the property at that time.
Rylands also kept hundreds of pounds after advertising a laptop for sale online.
When his buyer tried to collect the laptop, Rylands claimed he had been admitted to hospital and would post it instead.
The laptop never arrived and Rylands never returned the £450 paid, blaming both postal services and his bank for the missing items.
In November 2022, while he was a defendant in a different fraud case, Rylands tried to stop the trial going ahead by lying about hospital appointments for cancer treatment.
Checks at the hospital revealed no record of Rylands on the patient database. He was subsequently charged with perverting the course of justice.
At Canterbury Crown Court, Rylands, of Burch Avenue, Sandwich, admitted seven fraud offences. He also admitted that he had misled the court by claiming he had cancer when he did not.
DC Benjamin Deegan said: ‘Our investigation uncovered a trail of unhappy people who had put their trust in Rylands and ended up out of pocket.
‘He seemed to show little remorse for his actions, and thought that claiming he had cancer would provide him with a get-out-of-jail-free card.
‘He had a flagrant disregard for people and property and I am pleased we were able to bring him to court to face justice.’
He was sentenced to a total of 22 months in prison.