A serial rogue trader who preyed on sick and elderly customers has finally been jailed for the trail of heartbreak and destruction he left behind.
Daniel Footman, 46, tried to get sympathy from his victims by claiming he was ill, his child was in hospital, he had been in two car crashes and that his dog had died.
On one occasion, he told his customer he could not work because he had severe back pain – only to be seen on social media that same day posting photographs from a jet-skiing holiday.
The ‘professional crook’ continued to find customers who paid up front for work on their kitchens and bathrooms before realising they were being scammed.
One of his victims became suicidal and sold her home, while another elderly customer became so stressed that he suffered a suspected heart attack.
A third revealed how six years on she has still not be able to afford for the work Footman carried out to be redone and brought up to standard.
When a female client left a ‘scathing’ review on a trade website, Footman repaid her deposit on the condition she removed it.
Footman was given a suspended jail term in 2015 after admitting ripping off 11 customers in Worcestershire.
Daniel Footman, 46, has been jailed for five-and-a-half years after ripping off 31 vulnerable customers and tradespeople and pocketing a total of £120,000
He ‘cynically’ waited for his suspended sentence to expire before launching his new company, Opulent Lifestyle, in 2016.
Over the following four years, Footman ripped off 31 vulnerable customers and tradespeople, pocketing a total of £120,629.53.
Two sub-contractors employed by Footman threatened to rip out the work they had done at the homes of his terrified customers.
Footman admitted two charges of fraudulent trading between 2016 and 2020 from his home in Redditch, Worcestershire, while using a fake mailing address in London.
Prosecutor Ben Close said: ‘Daniel Footman is what is known colloquially as a rogue trader.
‘He purported to undertake all manner of building work and advertised on the basis that he provided luxury renovations and refurbishments.
‘He employed fraudulent practices such as insisting on advanced payments from customers then not returning to undertake work, or completing work only partially to a sub-standard level.’
Mr Close read evidence from Victim Personal Statements submitted by Footman’s customers at a sentencing hearing in Hereford Crown Court on Friday.
Footman admitted two charges of fraudulent trading between 2016 and 2020 from his home in Redditch, Worcestershire, while using a fake mailing address in London
He told how Alistair Barlow, landlord of the Royal Oak in Evesham, hired Footman to refurbish six bedrooms. He ended up paying a total of £19,280 for the rooms which were ‘basically trashed’ and could not be rented until they were repaired by a reputable firm for another £12,000.
‘Daniel Footman’s actions very nearly destroyed his business,’ said Mr Close.
Victim Philip Axelson paid £14,000 in stage payments to Footman to convert his garage into a soundproof music room. Footman failed to pay the electrician who did the wiring meaning Mr Axelson could not get a Buildings Regulations Certificate.
Mr Close said: ‘An electrician said he was going to come to the house and rip out everything that he had done, which led to Mr Axelson calling the police. The threat caused him and his wife to lose sleep.’
In February 2020 Mr Axelson started County Court proceedings and obtained a judgment against Footman for £7,518.62.
The barrister said: ‘His wife needed counselling and they now have a distrust of tradesmen. It has been a struggle to forget their experience.’
Footman quoted customer Carole Scarrett £5,595 to replace her bathroom, but she ended up with mental health issues after the work was left incomplete.
His excuses included that his wife was ill, his dog was ill and that his dog had died. He was said to have told Ms Scarrett the dog had died on two separate occasions.
Mr Close said: ‘At the time Ms Scarrett was a grieving widow which he took advantage of. He seemed plausible and pleasant and he betrayed her trust.
‘The time, trouble and expense of completing the unfinished work was bad enough, but she found the feeling of being lied to and taken advantage of more difficult to take. During this time, she attempted suicide.’
A list of 14 customers and 17 suppliers, trades people and sub-contractors was read to the court by prosecuting barrister Mr Close, acting for Redditch Borough Council..
Father-of-three Footman arrived with a holdall after being warned he was facing a substantial prison sentence for his fraudulent activity.
Charles Crinion, defending, said: ‘It was more brazen than sophisticated. He even started to believe some of his own lies.
‘He accepts full responsibility for his actions. He has found it difficult to admit what he has done to himself and his family.’
The court heard the proceeds of Footman’s fraudulent activity were not spent on fast cars and the high life, but went on ‘every day living’.
Footman, dressed in a blue pinstripe suit with an open-neck white shirt, showed no emotion as he was jailed for five-and-a-half years.
The ‘professional crook’ found customers who paid up front for work on their kitchens and bathrooms before realising they were being scammed. Pictured: A bathroom left in a state of disrepair by Footman
His victims complained that Footman would fail to turn up to work or complete work to an inadequate standard
Victim Philip Axelson paid £14,000 in stage payments to Footman to convert his garage into a soundproof music room. Pictured: An unfinished and poorly-constructed brick wall intended to form a new porch
Footman was accused of poor workmanship and leaving his customers with expensive repair bills to bring the job up to standard. Pictured: Inside Phil Axelson’s garage conversion
Judge Martin Jackson told him he had ‘lied and lied and lied’.
He said: ‘In 2015 you were put on a suspended sentence at Worcester Crown Court for similar offences of fraud when you were behaving in an identical way as in this case.
‘A little after a year you set up a new company and set about again defrauding members of the public who had asked you to carry out work for them and defrauding some contractors.
‘There was a repeated pattern here of asking for payment up front and in many cases people were prepared to make those payments.
‘Where work was done it was carried out to a very poor standard and your customers had to bring in contractors to do the work properly.
‘You repeatedly swindled people, fobbing them off with excuses. You even threatened customers who queried things. In short, your behaviour was nothing short of manipulative.’
The judge said the aggravating factor was the previous conviction and Footman was ‘cynical’ in waiting for his suspended sentence to expire.
He said: ‘Your mitigation, a letter saying you are remorseful and references that you are good to your family count for very little when I am dealing with a professional crook.’
Footman was disqualified from acting as a company director for 10 years.
Worcestershire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment and Communities, Councillor Ian Cresswell, said: ‘This case demonstrates how vital the work of our Trading Standards team is. This is a significant sentence and shows how seriously the courts view this type of offending.’
Head of Trading Standards for Worcestershire County Council, Simon Wilkes added: ‘Investigating complex fraud offences, often committed against vulnerable people is becoming one of the main areas of work for our Trading Standards team.
‘Unscrupulous and dishonest traders tempted to operate in our area, are warned that we will not hesitate to take similar action against anyone who exploits vulnerable people in our county.’
‘I was left feeling I couldn’t trust anyone ever again’
Retired pensioner Phil Axelson, 76, gave Daniel Footman £14,000 to convert his garage into a music room for his keen drummer son.
He said: ‘We had downsized in October 2017. The whole idea was that it would give us some extra savings for our old age.
‘When we moved into our new house, we wanted to have our garage converted into a music room, because our son had been having drum lessons since the age of 11.
‘In early 2018, my wife put an advert onto a website called MyJob Quote and Mr Footman responded to it.
‘We asked him to come and have a look and see what he could do. From what we understood, a simple garage conversion should have taken around three months.
‘We had booked to take our son to Vancouver for his 21st birthday in June 2018 and Mr Footman said that he would start the work while we were away.
‘But during the next three weeks the only progress he made was to remove some brickwork to form a doorway into the new room, and he had built a half wall to form part of a new porch that would give us access to the house and the conversion.
‘He estimated the work would cost £14,000, which we paid him over stages as time went on.
‘He brought in an electrician, because we needed a new consumer unit. Mr Footman invoiced us for the electrician’s work, but then I had a call from the electrician demanding money from me and saying Footman had never paid him.
‘The electrician threatened to come round and rip out everything he had done – and there was nothing to stop him because Footman had taken away our garage door at this point.
Retired pensioner Phil Axelson, 76, gave Daniel Footman £14,000 to convert his garage into a music room for his keen drummer son – but the work was sub-standard
Footman fitted an uneven door inside Phil Axelson’s garage conversion
‘We had sleepless nights wondering if he was going to come in and vandalise the room. And we lived with that for a long time.
‘Over the next few months some progress was made, but not much. Every time we chased Mr Footman up for progress he came back with excuses.
‘By December 2018, he arranged for a plasterer to come – and the same thing happened. He wasn’t paid and he threatened to come in and remove all the plaster.
‘In all honesty, when we looked at under powerful lights the standard of the plasterer’s work left a lot to be desired.
‘Mr Footman agreed, but the plaster refused to come back until he was paid. He then tried to arrange for another plasterer, but the second one refused because he knew about Mr Footman not paying his sub-contractors.
‘We also had a rubbish skip on our driveway, but they would not come and collect it because they too hadn’t been paid.
‘By April 2019, I was forced to find another contractor to finish the work, who did the job for another £6,000.
‘He found the soundproofed walls we had asked for were just polystyrene behind plasterboard. He had also fitted a radiator too low down to the floor.
‘We tried to chase Mr Footman through the small claims court, but even after a judgment against him and a High Court writ for payment, we received only a small amount of the thousands we gave him.
‘He’s a very credible person when you talk to him, but he’s obviously had a lot of experience conning people out of money.
‘If I had the chance, I would tell Mr Footman that he made our lives a misery and the stress made me ill.
‘The whole experience left me feeling that I could never trust anyone again.’
Worcestershire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Environment and Communities, Councillor Ian Cresswell, said: ‘This case demonstrates how vital the work of our Trading Standards team is.
‘This is a significant sentence and shows how seriously the courts view this type of offending.’
Head of Trading Standards for Worcestershire County Council, Simon Wilkes added: ‘Investigating complex fraud offences, often committed against vulnerable people is becoming one of the main areas of work for our Trading Standards team.
‘Unscrupulous and dishonest traders tempted to operate in our area, are warned that we will not hesitate to take similar action against anyone who exploits vulnerable people in our county.’
‘He took all the money I had to have my flooring done’
A vulnerable widow, who does not wished to be named, was left with unsightly gaps in her flooring after she hired Footman. Seven years on she has still not be able to afford to have the work redone.
‘In 2019 I put a post on CheckATrade. I found out later that Footman had been thrown out of the platform, but someone passed my information on to him.
‘So when he contacted me, I believed he was a trusted trader from there. He came around and could talk the talk. He was very charming and I believed him.
‘I wanted new flooring in my hall and lounge and it was expected to take a day’s work.
‘Before he came, I moved all my furniture out into the back garden so he could get on with the job.
‘On the first day, he turned up but did a tiny little fraction of it.
‘I wasn’t very happy, because it wasn’t laid right and there was some large gaps. The next day I had a message off him saying he wasn’t very well and he had a bad back.
‘But he had taken most of the money off me up front already. He had charged me £2,500 for the job.
‘I gave him the benefit of the doubt, so I’d left my furniture out all day, expecting him to turn up the next day. But he kept saying he couldn’t make it, he wasn’t very well.
‘After a few weeks, he had only laid a partial part of my lounge.
‘Then my daughter came to me and said there was a picture on Facebook of him abroad and jet-skiing. He’d gone on holiday with my money.
‘But yet he kept up the pretense. He sent me a message saying: ‘I’ve been in bed, the last few days my back’s in pieces. Going to try and see the doctors today about some of the painkillers’.
‘Another one said: ‘At the moment, I’m struggling to do anything. Let me see if my dad can help me to do it.’
‘I was angry, but I just wanted the job done and I only had a certain amount of money. I couldn’t afford to pay anybody else. He’d had all my money and he knew that, so I gave him a second chance.
‘After more than six weeks, he finally said he was finished. I went and come in, and there was glue all over the floor and everything. I’ve got artificial knees, I’ve had several surgeries on my spine – and I thought, I’m gonna have to get on my hands and knees and try and clean that up now.
‘Also, where it had come up to the wooden threshold in the lounge, he had put this brown mastic in and it was all unevenly cut as well. Every time I trod on the trim, it came apart.
‘All these years later there are gaps and uneven cuts. I’ve had to put rugs down to hide the gaps and pay for a carpenter and a custom-made piece of wood to redo the threshold.
‘He just left my house in a mess. He took advantage of me because my husband was away working at the time
‘I had genuinely worked hard for that money and now I have to live with this.
‘He should be ashamed of himself, but I don’t think he’s got any shame.’
‘We couldn’t sell our home due to his shoddy work’
Mother-of-two Lisa was pregnant with her first child when she paid Footman to renovate her bathroom and kitchen. He told her it would take weeks, but the job was not finished until her daughter was 10 months old.
‘In 2012, my husband and I were living in a one-bed home. We knew it wasn’t going to be big enough for when our baby arrived, so we were looking to sell and move somewhere bigger.
‘We wanted renovation works on our bathroom and a new kitchen put in before we sold the property.
‘Dan [Footman] told us it would take a few weeks to renovate our bathroom – but he did a terrible job and by the time it was repaired and finished by another contractor our daughter was 10 months old.
‘In our naivety we paid about 80 per cent upfront.
‘He told us we would be without the toilet for a few days – but it turned out to be three months. I had to move out of our home and in with my parents.
‘After a while I told him the job needed to be finished but then he started coming up with all excuses, saying he was not well.
‘We were constantly having to call and text him to come round but he wouldn’t answer the phone. When he did eventually finish the work, after a very long time, it wasn’t to a very good standard.
‘Someone pointed out he had placed a kitchen cupboard too close to the oven, so it wasn’t even safe. In the bathroom, the tiles were wonky and holes were patched up with filler. We even had a relative who was an electrician to come in and work on the kitchen – but he never paid them. The whole thing was a nightmare.
‘Daniel seemed very personable and confident he could do the job.
‘As time went on we got the sob stories, the excuses. The more I pestered him the less he answered.
‘We were at his mercy because we’d paid him to do the job and we couldn’t sell the house until it was finished. Even after it was done, it probably affected the price we got because it looked shoddy.
‘I thought his court appearance in 2015 would be the end of it, so when I heard he had done it again, my stomach just dropped.
‘If I thought it would do any good, I would say he needs to think about the massive impact he’s having on other people’s lives, but I think it would go in one ear and out the other. I don’t think he actually cares.
‘We were in a vulnerable situation, because of me being pregnant, but to think he ripped off elderly people as well, it’s just horrible.’
