AN ‘AGGRESSIVE’ tree surgeon told a customer he would ‘torture’ his wife if he did not pay up for garden work he did not ask for.

Jimmy Cole Senior and Jimmy Cole Junior, both of Minley Road, Blackwater, Camberley, threatened several customers after carrying out oftentimes unsolicited work on their gardens.

The father and son team were both spared prison despite leaving their customers ‘violated and scared’ following their ‘poor quality’ work.

Their offences took place across Berkshire and Oxfordshire in Newbury, Tilehurst, Purely-on-Thames and Wantage.

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One incident saw Jimmy Cole Junior threaten to smash a customer’s windows and torture his wife after he carried out £520 of unsolicited work for an unsuspecting Newbury resident in November 2018.

On another occasion, in June 2019, the pair started work on a house in Tilehurst but stopped shortly afterwards because they discovered nesting birds.

They said they would return in October 2019, but never came back. This led to one of a number of fraud convictions for the pair.

Reading Crown Court heard how the pair would use a copy-and-paste method to rinse their customers of hundreds of pounds in cash from 2018 to 2020.

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They would cold-call residents and would often tell them they had trimmed their neighbour’s trees or bushes.

The Coles would subsequently push a waiver-type form in front of the customers but did not inform them of their cancellation rights, as they would have been required to.

After insisting on payment via cash, the father and son duo would then get aggressive if questioned about their services.

More often than not, the frightened customers would hand over hundreds of pounds in cash out of fear.

Following a prosecution by the Public Protection Partnership, the Coles appeared at Reading Crown Court for sentencing on Friday, March 18.

His Honour Recorder Smith, sentencing, said: “Your offending relates to Greenwood Tree Services.

“You intimidated prospective customers into paying for work they did not want, did not need or work you never did.

“You threatened your victims in their own homes. You left them feeling exploited.

“You did this time after time, even after criminal investigations started.

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“There was a pattern to your offending.

“Wearing branded clothing and arriving in a branded pick-up truck, you would cold call at your victim’s homes and would falsely claim you were working for a neighbour, or in some case, you were going to start working on a tree even when customer asked you not to.

“You would tell them you needed cash to take waste to the tip.

“When your customers queried the quality of your work you became aggressive or threatening.

“On one occasion, you made a threat to return to a house and smash all the windows and torture the customer’s wife.

“The work was always of a poor quality.

“You justified your high prices by saying it was a maintenance contract and saying you would come back, but you never did.

“This sort of offending leaves your customers feeling violated and scared.

“What you have done undermines genuine traders.

“The victims in these cases will now feel wary about accepting business from a trader again.”

The recorder handed Jimmy Cole Senior, 56, a 32-week prison sentence suspended for two years for two counts of aggressive trading and two counts of fraud.

Jimmy Cole Junior, 33, was sentenced to 46 weeks in prison suspended for two years for seven counts of fraud and one count of aggressive trading.

A prosecution application for costs of £16,000 was dismissed by the Recorder in order to enable the father and son to pay compensation to the victims.