Suffolk builder jailed after taking nearly £600,000 from customers to fund lavish lifestyle
He and his wife enjoyed holidays to Gibraltar and the Italian Grand Prix
Last updated 7th Nov 2023
A rogue Suffolk builder who dishonestly took nearly £600,000 from customers to finance a lavish lifestyle has been jailed for more than four years.
Alan Middleton and his wife Katie enjoyed holidays to Gibraltar and the Italian Grand Prix, regular visits to London, hiring caravans at a holiday park, and shopping trips.
He even paid for a Gibraltar holiday for people who worked for him.
Suffolk Trading Standards calculates he received in the region of £592,000 from customers before being brought to justice when he was jailed at Wood Green Crown Court in London.
Middleton, 45, of Merlin Close, Rugby, but formerly of Saxmundham, traded as GK Builders, G & K Builders, Middleton Building Services, AGM Custom Construction and AGM Bespoke Construction Limited, and operated across Suffolk.
Multiple counts of fraud
He admitted five counts of fraud by false representation, one of theft, one under the Insolvency Act for obtaining payments over £500 whilst an undischarged bankrupt, and one offence under the Company Directors Disqualification Act for setting up a limited company as a bankrupt.
The court heard one contract was worth £380,000 with £70,000 VAT while another was for £210,000 with VAT of £45,000, despite Middleton not being VAT-registered.
He also used a forged Federation of Master Builders insurance document to suggest he was insured to perform works.
Middleton was jailed for a total of four years and six months and disqualified as a director for five years by Recorder Sailesh Mehta.
He and his 34-year-old wife also pleaded guilty to two counts of fraudulently obtaining a mortgage for themselves worth £400,000.
For these offences he was jailed for 12 months, to run concurrently.
Mrs Middleton received a nine-month sentence, suspended for 18 months, and was ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £140.
They pretended they were not in a relationship and that Mrs Middleton earned a salary of £108,000 to obtain a mortgage, something that would not otherwise have happened because of Mr Middleton’s poor credit history.
How the investigation began
Suffolk Trading Standards began their investigation after receiving reports of customers who had paid for building work only for it to have been never completed.
Middleton would tell his victims he would only work on one property at a time, but consumers quickly became aware he was working on multiple projects to the detriment of their own building works.
The investigation also uncovered Middleton was using various tactics to extract more money from customers, including falsifying supplier invoices and using a fake VAT number.
In addition, he had previously declared himself bankrupt but failed to disclose this to consumers despite it being a legal obligation.
Once Middleton realised Suffolk Trading Standards was investigating him he reverted to using the name Alan Middleton for business, having previously used Gary Middleton.
"A greedy man"
Graham Crisp, Head of Suffolk Trading Standards, said:
“Middleton is a greedy man who thought nothing of exploiting his customers, many of them using their life savings or taking out loans to pay for the work to achieve their dream home.
“He was utterly unscrupulous and did whatever he could to extract money from them.
“This included falsifying invoices to claim £170,000 in VAT despite not being registered, forging insurance documents to mislead people into thinking their properties were protected, and endangering lives by incorrectly stating building control was not required for projects when this was in fact needed.”
Councillor Andrew Reid, Suffolk County Council’s cabinet member for Public Health and Public Protection, said:
“Middleton is now reaping the consequences of his actions and I hope his sentencing goes some way towards providing justice for those he exploited.
“Customers trusted him, but he abused that trust in a way that left them picking up the pieces.
“Not only would he disappear part-way through a job, causing untold distress when his victims had to finance the completion of his work, what work he did carry out was often to a poor standard.”