ROGUE builder Richard Anderson has been jailed for 18 months after a court heard how he tried to con a retired teacher who used the internet to help foil his plan.

The conman called at the home of his victim, telling her she needed to have work done on her roof because she had lichen on the tiles.

But the former schoolmistress, named at Swindon Crown Court as a Mrs King, who lives on her own, became suspicious after he persuaded her she needed to have a number of tiles removed at a cost of £950.

When he was arrested and questioned by police, he told them that the quote he had submitted had a decimal place in it and was meant to say £9.50.

Jason Taylor, prosecuting, said that Anderson called at the Wanborough home of Mrs King at lunchtime on Saturday, September 27, last year.

The 22-year-old handed her a card and leaflet for a company called Weathershield and said he had noticed lichen on the roof. He offered to clean it off.

She agreed to have the work done and Anderson and a colleague started cleaning the tiles.

But on the Tuesday he told her that there was further work which needed doing.

He told her that because of bird droppings there had been damage to the felt of the roof, which would need to be repaired.

"He said and this is the deception that to repair the damage caused they would have to take four rows of tiles from her roof, front and back, and lay whole new tiles on the felt," Mr Taylor said.

Although he told her it would normally cost £1,500 to carry out the work, he said he could do it for £950 as he was doing some other work in the area.

"Mrs King said he was very persuasive and insistent and she agreed to have the work carried out."

But Mr Taylor said that she noticed the receipt she had been given for the other work appeared amateurish, with spelling mistakes, so she conducted some detective work.

She checked out the address on the internet and found it didn't exist, and spoke to neighbours before contacting the police.

When Anderson was arrested, he told officers that he had not been persistent and said that he had covered the damaged part of the roof with plastic bags so she didn't have to have the work carried out immediately.

"He said he had quoted £9.50 and not £950, and that there was a decimal point missing," Mr Taylor said. As a result of the investigation, a professional roofer was commissioned and priced the work needed at £60.

Mr Taylor said that it was accepted that the deceit was in an over-exaggeration of the work which needed to be done.

Anderson, of Gilsons Field, Alvescot Road, Carterton, Oxford-shire, pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted deception.

David Baird, defending, said that his client was a man of previous good character.

He said that Anderson was surprised about the complaint but accepted that the offence was in the scope of the work quoted for.

Although his client had a disrupted childhood and struggled to read and write he said Anderson hoped to study for some formal building qualifications.

Jailing him, Judge Charles Wade said: "Those who deliberately deceive people into parting with their money in this way can only be dealt with in my view with a custodial sentence."

Tamash Lal