A young Perth man who attempted to scam vulnerable pensioners out of hundreds of pounds escaped imprisonment.
Martin McPhee posed as a gardener to approach his elderly victims in the knowledge that their failing faculties would make them easy prey.
He dodged custody “by the skin of his teeth”, however, despite being told that such a sentence would have been a “completely appropriate” way of dealing with his crimes.
Sheriff Michael Fletcher said the accused’s lack of previous record left the courts having to first try an alternative and he instead made the 20-year-old subject to a community payback order.
The order requires McPhee to be under supervision for a year and to carry out 200 hours of unpaid work.
McPhee’s first victim was a frail, 93-year-old woman who, Perth Sheriff Court heard, suffered from short-term memory loss and became easily confused.
Though her family were present in December last year when he first knocked on her door, McPhee returned the following day and induced her to pay £70 for “gardening work”.
When the woman confided in her daughter that she had handed over money to a young man, she was told that no work had been carried out and that she should not have given him any money.
Flushed with his success, McPhee returned to the house for a third time the following day and asked for further payment, but received no money after the pensioner first sought advice from her family.
The following month, he shifted his target to a second pensioner this time an 85-year-old woman who also suffers from problems with her memory.
Neighbours saw the accused spend about 30 minutes chopping branches from a tree before approaching the house to speak to the occupant.
He claimed the pruning would cost £50 but later returned to ask for a further £350, offering to drive his victim to a bank so that she could withdraw money.
Thankfully, a teller at the Bank of Scotland branch in Scone’s Perth Road became concerned by the reason given for the withdrawal.
The pensioner confided that McPhee had told her to withdraw the money to pay for gardening work and was waiting in a van in a nearby side-street. The teller persuaded the woman not to withdraw the money and went with her to confront the accused.
He claimed that he had pruned and weeded the woman’s garden and laid concrete though the court was told he had not before driving away from the scene.
Depute fiscal Chris MacIntosh told the court: “He was later traced by the police, but denied having taken money for works that were not carried out.
“He denied attempting to defraud these vulnerable women out of what would have been fairly substantial sums of money.”
McPhee, of Newhouse Road, gave guilty pleas to three charges. He admitted that on December 12 last year, at Kincardine Road in Auchterarder, he pretended to a pensioner that he had carried out gardening work and obtained £70 from her by fraud.
He also admitted that on the following day, at the same address, he used the same ruse to try to obtain even more money from the woman.
And he further admitted that on January 21 this year, at the Bank of Scotland branch on Scone’s Perth Road, he pretended to another pensioner that he had carried out gardening work and attempted to force her to withdraw money and give him £350.
Sheriff Michael Fletcher told McPhee: “These are the type of offences that very often result in a custodial sentence and I think a custodial sentence is a completely appropriate way of dealing with this.
“This is your first offence, however, and I am required to look at whether there is an alternative. You have missed a custodial sentence by the skin of your teeth and I hope you are aware of that.”
In addition to the 200 hours of unpaid work, McPhee was ordered to pay his first victim £70 compensation.