Elderly victims of a cowboy builder will only get £5.60 compensation per couple, York Crown Court heard.

Gerald Johnston defrauded two couples out of a total of £1,968.53 with his lies about their roofs and work he said he had done on them.

But when North Yorkshire trading standards investigated his assets to get some compensation for the victims, they only found £11.20.

“It is from the sale of a vehicle,” Johnston’s barrister Sunil Khanna told the court.

The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, said it was a “bit of an insult” to order the money to be shared between the two couples.

Philip Morley for North Yorkshire trading standards said: “That is the total assets, it is to be regretted. But if he was to come into any further money, then the order could be revised.”

The judge ordered the £11.20 to be split between the two couples. One of the victims has died since Johnston cheated them.

Because the judge also ordered that Johnston benefited by £1,968 from his crimes, the prosecution could apply in future for him to pay more money up to the full amount.

He told Johnston: “If you were to win the lottery, the £1,968 will have to be repaid.”

Johnston, 33, of Carlton Caravan Site, Lynwith Lane, Goole, had just finished a suspended prison sentence for similar crimes when he committed his latest crimes.

He was jailed for two years last July after admitting charges of misleading commercial practices and fraud. He was also banned from cold calling anywhere in the country for five years under a criminal behaviour order and banned from driving for three years.

York Crown Court heard last July how Johnston has no qualifications in any form of building or roofing work, but had been doing building work since he was a teenager.

Within minutes of cold calling a pensioner and his wife in the Selby area, he knew the pensioner was registered blind. He persuaded the couple to pay £500 for “roof work” and took the pensioner to a post office to get some of the money.

In Doncaster, he defrauded a second elderly couple out of £1,380 with false claims of doing work on their roof and again, he took one of the couple to a bank to get the money.

North Yorkshire trading standards told the court that when they instructed a qualified surveyor to inspect the "work" Johnston had done, he declared it was non-existent, shoddy or was so poor it needed repairing.

Following the trial, both couples warned others against trusting cold callers.

Judge Simon Hickey, who sentenced Johnston, told him “If you want to continue in this trade you are going to need to make sure it is with qualifications and done in a legitimate way.”