The beaming cowboy builders: Rogue traders enjoyed lavish lifestyle despite leaving £106K trail of bodge job misery for their clients - including family of girl, 12, with brain tumour

The bosses of a cowboy building company lived the high life while leaving behind a £106,000 trail of misery as they ruined the lives of their trusting customers.

Rebecca Wilson, 40, ripped off clients even though she'd previously been handed a suspended jail term for dishonest trading.

While fleecing families of their hard earned cash for shoddy and often dangerous building work, Wilson was living in a large four bedroom detached £270,000 home on an upmarket estate and enjoying the trappings of her ill-gotten gains.

Former customers told how she spent her cash on botox, hair extensions and boozy parties with her pals in the champagne bars of the North East.

Her partner in crime David Gillies, 43, was a director of her firm Riverside Resin and also raked in thousands from their scam, which left 16 families devastated and facing spiralling bills to fix the mess their workmen made.

One of those victims was, a then 12-year-old girl, who Wilson and Gillies knew suffered from a brain tumour.

Her dad Ian Dimond, 51, was one of their first victims, signing up to have timber decking built in the back garden in a £7,000 project.

At the same time as the work was being carried out, Ian and partner Sarah Vaughan were horrified to discover Chloe was suffering from a brain tumour which was pressing on her optic nerve.

She needed chemotherapy in a bid to shrink the growth and was told to recover at home between treatment sessions.

Ian, of Esh Winning, County Durham, said: 'Chloe's consultant told us that she could not mix with other people because her immune system was so low, his advice was 'the best place for her is to go out into the fresh air in the back garden.'

'It seemed fortunate at the time that we'd hired Riverside Resins to build a decking area that Chloe could sit on as she recuperated.'

The decking was built and at first glance appeared to have been installed correctly.

But within days the boards started to spring up and screws that weren't strong enough to hold down the timber were exposed.

Ian said: 'It simply wasn't safe for Chloe to go out there. The edges weren't finished, boards were loose and bowed and sharp screws were sticking up.

'Chloe's tumour was affecting her vision very badly. Her left eye was down to 25% capacity and her peripheral vision in the other eye was badly affected.

'There was no way we could let her out into the garden, it was just wasn't safe to do so.

'Her immune system was compromised so if myself, her mum or elder brother had a cold or a hint of one she couldn't come near us.

'The only place she was able to go was her bedroom and that's where she spent her time.'

He pleaded with Riverside Resins to come back and rectify the substandard work they had started but was constantly fobbed off by Rebecca Wilson.

Ian said: 'We were in a really bad situation and Wilson knew exactly what that was because I went to great lengths to tell her.

'Chloe couldn't be at home on her own so I took redundancy from my job in finance to be able to look after her.

'They knew about the tumour and how desperately worried we were as a family and the huge benefits there would be for Chloe to be able to go outside in the garden.

'But they just didn't care and they did nothing, I was fobbed off at every turn, even when I was calling three times a week. 

'I'd be told "we're waiting for some clips to come in" which was an excuse she used for weeks, it was clear they had no intention of coming back to sort out the mess.'

Ian went to Trading Standards, who began an investigation and only then did Wilson offer compensation.

At first she offered £500 'to make Trading Standards go away.'

The dad said: 'She later told me 'I'm done, there's no money left in the company' and offered £3,500 in compensation.

'I told her I wasn't interested and that she deserved her day in court. I'm glad that she went to prison after what she did, it's just a shame her director wasn't jailed as well because he was just as bad.'

Chloe is now recovering and has been able to return to school after the chemo shrank her tumour. However, her eyesight has been permanently damaged by the ordeal.

She said: 'It was such a worrying time for all of us and the builders made it so much worse.'

Wilson, from Billingham, County Durham, admitted 17 counts of fraud and 15 of unfair trading.

She had a previous conviction and suspended prison sentence for 10 similar unfair trading offences in 2017, when she was known as Rebecca Dack, over poor work to driveways and gardens by another home improvement company, and had been warned about business practices and complaints years earlier.

Gillies, 43, from Redcar, North Yorks, pleaded guilty to eight unfair trading charges and was given an eight month prison term suspended for 18 months with 240 hours' unpaid work.

Other victims told the court of their ordeals.

Leisa Smith, of Hartlepool, invested money from her late father in her home, but ended up losing £47,660.

She said she could 'feel the black clouds start to appear' whenever she looked at the faulty works.

She said: 'I was getting them work, inviting them into my home and recommending them to my friends and family, for them now to be in the same position as me, with shoddy work and out of pocket.

'It made me feel so naive and stupid. It made me question myself. I should have stopped them.

'I still cannot use more than two appliances in my kitchen as it trips the sockets. You can imagine how bad Christmas is, cooking for 12.

'I went through a traumatic time. They made me feel stupid, incompetent and a liar. They took my confidence… I look at all the problems, the stress and trauma it caused me and worry about how much it's going to cost to put it right, and that weight returns to my shoulders.'

It was in June 2020 that she handed over £28,000 to Riverside Resin for a kitchen and garage extension, a front drive and resined back garden - and then watched in horror as they botched one job after another.

Leisa said: 'One day a plasterer arrived and brought his 10-year-old son along to help him. I couldn't believe my walls were being plastered by a young lad who was still in primary school.

'They used my best kingsize duvet cover as a dust sheet to catch the mess and ruined it. I man my feelings known and as he left he called me a "snooty c***."

'My kitchen was left in a dangerous condition. The wiring they did was so unsafe that you could hear it crackling as you walked past.

'And if you stood on a particular floorboard it moved the wiring and would short circuit the entire kitchen.

'Holes were filled with expandable foam and painted over, wiring was left exposed in the walls, the resin in the back garden retained water in big pools and everything they did was substandard.

'Rebecca Wilson would come round and sit there with her hair extensions and botox and tell me there was nothing she could do - whilst at the same time trying to get me to part with more money for more jobs.

'They knew exactly what they were doing when they took that money. They knew the work was terrible and they didn't care.'

Another customer, from Stockton on Tees, said: 'Not only did Riverside Resin ruin my garden and driveway by using the wrong materials and leaving it uneven and patchy but they also caused damage to my garage, as when they installed the resin they covered my air vents, therefore I now have damp in my garage and also my house.

'Unfortunately because of the cowboy job that has been done on my garden. I have not furnished it as I cannot bear to go outside because it really upsets me looking around at the state of my garden and seeing the damp and mould on my garage wall. Even going out to hang the washing out is difficult for me and at times my eyes well up and I cannot help but cry.'

As he sentenced Wilson, Judge Christopher Smith told her: 'You allowed promises to be made which you knew the company could not or might not be able to keep, to fulfil the agreed work to a satisfactory standard. You failed to listen to so many warnings about your incompetent and dishonest trade in this line of work.

'I'm satisfied that across your 16 victims the loss here was undoubtedly at least £100,000. You were at the helm of this fraudulent behaviour.'

He said he had heard victims' stories, adding: 'They are all depressingly similar. Stories of homeowners whose lives have been at least spoiled, sometimes ruined, by the anxiety, stress, loss of trust that they now have in tradesmen.'

Robert Mochrie, defending Wilson, said: 'She wishes through me to apologise to all of the customers or victims for her behaviour. She is very sorry for the upset that it caused them.

'There have been troubles in her life and she has struggled herself financially. Through her own mismanagement and recklessness, she accepts that this descended into fraudulent activity, but she was becoming increasingly desperate herself to keep far too many plates spinning.'

Paul Abrahams, for Gillies, said he tried to repair and 'paper over the cracks' of work that needed to be ripped up and started again. 'He was trying to make amends,' Mr Abrahams said. 'Of course it wasn't enough, nor is an apology.'