Rogue builder with cocaine and gambling habit jailed for stealing jewellery and cash from Harrogate couple

Sam Brotherston, 32, from Harrogate, was contracted to renovate the couple’s home on Beckwith Road and was left to his own devices while the victims were out at work, York Crown Court heard.

Soon enough, the couple, who had pinned their hopes on Brotherston converting the property into their “dream home”, started noticing money and jewellery going missing from an upstairs bedroom, said prosecutor Sam Roxborough.

He said the couple were quoted over £13,000 for the work including building materials and labour.

Brotherston, who was self-employed, asked for £4,289 to buy materials such as a door and steel joist for work which was not only never completed, but left the couple with an open sewer in their kitchen and demolished walls.

To add insult to injury, he never bought the materials and instead spent it on his rampant gambling and cocaine habit.

Initially trusting of Brotherston, the couple handed him the money and he began work on the property in March last year when the named victims gave him a key to their house.

But on March 18, just nine days into the job, the female victim noticed £20 was missing from her purse.

Just under two weeks later, she noticed that more cash had disappeared while she was away from home.

Brotherston had helped himself to £80 in total, as well as two white gold rings, which had also been kept in the bedroom.

The victim did her own investigatory work by visiting pawnbrokers in Harrogate to see if Brotherston had tried to sell her jewellery and she found one of her rings up for sale in a local jeweller’s.

“Unfortunately, one of the rings was scrapped by the jeweller’s,” said Mr Roxborough.

Police recovered the other ring when they turned up at the jeweller’s a few days later.

Staff told officers that Brotherston had sold three other gold and silver rings at the jewellers.

He stole those pieces from a friend while carrying out work at her home in Brunswick Drive, Harrogate.

The victim, a woman who was named in court, didn’t want to press charges because she was a friend of Brotherston’s family, but he admitted stealing her rings.

Mr Roxborough said the Beckwith Road couple were devastated to hear that Brotherston, of Hollins Lane, Hampsthwaite, had used the money deposited into his account to place bets “at various betting establishments”.

He was arrested following an investigation and charged with burglary, two counts of theft and one of fraud.

He admitted all four offences and appeared for sentence today.

The female victim of the Beckwith Road offences said she and her husband had trusted Brotherston, only for him to steal from them on three separate occasions over a period of nearly a month.

She said the rings were of sentimental value and she had been left feeling “violated, scared, shocked and saddened”, and she was now struggling to sleep.

One of the rings, which was never recovered, belonged to her husband’s grandmother and one was a wedding gift.

The other was a present for her 30th birthday.

“Seeing the rings for sale in the pawnbrokers was shocking and left me feeling sick to the stomach,” she said.

She was now scared to be alone in her home and she and her husband had changed all the locks and installed security cameras.

She said that Brotherston’s shoddy, “half-completed” work had left them with an open sewer and that walls had been knocked down which would need rebuilding.

Wires were “hanging out of the walls” and the living room was left a mess.

“This work was going to complete our dream of providing a lovely family home for my young children to grow up in,” she added.

“This is devastating, it’s going to be hard for me to trust anybody again.”

She and her husband were now faced with spending the same amount of money again to put right what Brotherston had ruined.

Defence barrister Emma Williams said that Brotherston, a father-of-one, had been caught up in a “gambling and drug-use cycle” but that his behaviour was “out of character”.

The offences had led to the break-up of the relationship with his partner.

Judge Sean Morris described Brotherston’s offences as “very mean and hurtful and damaging acts of dishonesty”.

He told Brotherston: “You were snorting your way through cocaine bought with £10,000 worth of gambling winnings.

"No doubt having blown all that, you then decided that you needed (the victims) money to carry on snorting cocaine and enjoying the lifestyle.

“At the same time as you were pilfering hard-earned money from that couple and not doing the work that was required, you were creeping around their house going into their bedroom and you stole some rings that had real sentimental value.

“That’s had an awful effect on the lady of the house.

"They will have been left in a shocking situation and that is all down to your greed and dishonesty.”

Mr Morris said the offences were “too mean” and “appalling” for there to be anything other than an immediate jail sentence.

Brotherston was jailed for 13 months.