A CONMAN who made more than £85,000 from fleecing the elderly for unnecessary house repairs has had his assets taken from him - but the courts were only able to confiscate his £1,600 pension.

Anthony Bolt, 52, along with his partner-in-crime Roy Williams, 53, was convicted in June this year of 20 counts of conspiracy to defraud between December 2001 and April 2003.

Judge John Dixon told the pair that they had "deliberately and callously" targeted the elderly of Poole and High Wycombe by persuading them to overpay for shoddy building work.

He said: "If it was within my power to do so, I would order you to go back to each and every property and replace every bodged roof tile."

But although Winchester Crown Court heard yesterday that Bolt, of Southbourne House, High Wycombe, had benefited by £85,910 from these offences, his realisable assets were only valued at his Axa Sunlife pension of £1,621.04.

Judge Dixon ordered that this be confiscated.

A separate confiscation hearing must be held for Williams, of Clarendon Road, Broadstone, before December 17, but Judge Dixon said Bolt's hearing would not prejudice the way he deals with the other defendant.

Bolt is currently serving a four-year jail sentence for the frauds, plus six months for a separate charge of obtaining social security money by deception.

Williams - dubbed the "fiddler on the roof" in an earlier trial, and who Judge Dixon thought of as the prime mover in the offences, is serving five years plus 208 days for crimes committed while on licence.