A fraudulent trader has been forced to pay a total of £44,132 to his victims or face over two years in prison for his crimes.

Daniel Fidler, 30, from Bournemouth was sentenced to a total of 38 months of initial custody on May 30 2022 after pleading guilty to all counts.

The rogue trader duped elderly residents as old as 90 out of thousands of pounds for property work that was not needed on fourteen occasions.

Thirty-year-old Fidler pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud by false representation and seven counts of unfair trading and he was jailed for 38 months at Reading Crown Court.

This was following a financial investigation and lengthy confiscation proceedings which were conducted by officers from the Public Protection Partnership Trading Standards Service.

The fraudster now has three months to pay the money, which will be distributed to victims and their families, or face 30 months imprisonment if he doesn’t pay.

The money will be collected by the court’s enforcement unit.

Commenting on the case Cllr Iskandar Jefferies, Executive Member for Culture, Delivery and Public Protection at Bracknell Forest Council said “These were serious crimes that resulted in an immediate custodial sentence in 2022. I am pleased that through the work of our Public Protection Service that we have been able to recover this sizeable amount of money to go some way to compensating the victims’. “.