AN ELDERLY couple were “duped” into handing £7,000 to a conman who needlessly replaced their roof.

Alan Read said he “feels like a fool” after letting Kevin Sherwood of Wimborne Road, Bournemouth, drive him to the bank to pay for the extra work to be done when he only called him out to fix his chimney.

Sherwood tricked the 85-year-old into having the new roof and Sherwood has now been jailed for a year for fraud.

Alan and his partner Margaret, 82 have not been awarded any compensation and still have the roof that was fitted at their home in Merley, near Wimborne.

Alan said: “I feel such a fool and an idiot really. I got sucked in, it was the biggest mistake of my life.”

The pensioner contacted Sherwood’s company Kinson Roofing and was happy with the price he was given for re-pointing the chimney and clearing off moss.

“The next thing I knew the tiles were coming off and he said he was going to clean them and put them back on and I thought ‘that’s crazy’,” Alan said.

Alan, a retired carpenter, said when Sherwood told him the roof had to be replaced he felt like he had to pay as the roof had been taken off. “He wouldn’t take a cheque,” he said.

“He wanted cash and the roof was off so I suppose I panicked and I felt I had to get him to finish the job. I felt backed into a corner.”

Alan said Sherwood was friendly and called him “Al” and drove him to get cash five times, waiting in the car while he went into Santander in Broadstone and Merley Post Office.

The grandfather said he hopes Sherwood “changes his ways” so more people do not get conned.

Margaret, a retired teacher who worked at Cranborne Middle School, added: “I was disgusted that we’d been taken in, it was awful.”

And her son Paul Williamson, who called the police after returning from holiday, said: “Alan was at the point of a nervous breakdown and couldn’t see a way out of it.”

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