Warning as elderly couple lose €2k in tree cutting scam
By Caomhóg Breathnach
AN ELDERLY couple were robbed out of €2,000 in a scam by someone claiming to be a tree surgeon that they had hired to cut down trees in their back garden.
The couple said that they had been looking around to get prices to cut down the trees in their back garden, that had grown extremely high.
The trees and branches left in the back garden
On March 1, a man called in to their home in Old Bawn, Tallaght and told them that a lady who lives at the back of their house had sent him around to ask if they wanted the trees cut.
“We asked him if he had a card and he said he had no card with him today, but he would do a great job and take 20 foot off and clean up the garden.
“I said, you will have to give us a few days to organise money, in the mean-time we have a hedge between the two houses and I asked would he be able to give us a price for that. He said he would do it for €120. They did a very good job on that hedge and they cleaned up.
“He came back on the Friday and he had a very professional looking van. There were six guys and himself were seven.
“My husband went out and the man said that he was going to leave the other men to clean up. My husband shouldn’t have paid him, but he did because I had my grandchild here and I was concentrating on her.
When the men left, the couple said they didn’t notice anything strange from their side of the garden, but it was only when a neighbour called in they realised that something was wrong.
“We couldn’t see anything on our side, we thought the tops of the trees were gone, until a neighbour at the back came around and told us there was all branches hanging down on their side.
“My son went around and had a look and said, ‘Mam that’s not right at all’. We were worried because if a wind came along, the amount of stuff that was up in the trees was unbelievable.
Worried about the dangerous branches hanging down, the couple were forced to ring a different professional company to clean up the mess left.
“The pieces would have killed someone. There is a gentleman at the back of our house who is 80 years of age and if one of those pieces fell they would have killed him. The professional man said it could have blown anyway, and that’s what was frightening.”
The couple explained that they tried to ring the man on numerous occasions in the days after, but the phone was ringing out.
“Eventually a lady answered the phone and she said she would give him the message and there was no sign of him ringing back.
“Sunday morning my husband rang, and he said he’ll be back and he never came back, we didn’t think he would. Now when you ring the phone it’s just ringing out.”
The men also targeted two neighbours of the couple, one that found branches from a bush in her bin the following day and another lady who said they threw the top of her palm tree into a neighbouring garden.
“They got a lot of money between the three houses. They came out of nowhere, it was just because we were looking around for prices and he was so convincing normally we don’t fall for anything like that, but I’m afraid we did.
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