"I FEEL disgust for them, absolute disgust."

Joan Elford is under no illusions about the type of men who tried to scam her out of thousands of pounds - after they had already succeeded in tricking her friend.

Joan, 74, is wily enough to spot a conman a mile off - and helped to catch "Fiddler on the Roof" Roy Williams and his accomplice Anthony Bolt.

But, like more than 100 other elderly people these men preyed on, Joan's 86-year-old friend did not realise how dangerous the pair were when they cold-called her and said her roof was in need of repair. She was originally quoted £200 for the repairs, but ended up paying out £6,500.

Joan says her hard-of-hearing friend, from Broadstone, was easily convinced by the men, who said it would not be too expensive to fix one or two problems with her roof.

"Then they moved in on her," says Joan. "She hadn't got the sort of money they wanted in her bungalow, so they took her to the bank to draw it out.

"When I asked her about it, she seemed so pleased to think they'd been thoughtful enough to do that, but to me that was the red light."

Joan set up a trap to catch them, asking Williams to give her an estimate for a damp patch on her wall.

"He said that the tiles on the roof were all cracked and broken up, that there were problems with the guttering and that it would cost me about £5,000," she says.

Williams gave her a business card, which said he and Bolt were based in Moor Road, but when Joan went down there to look, there was no sign of their company.

When Joan called in another builder, he told her there was nothing wrong with her roof and fixed her wall for £40, so she phoned the police.

Her call led to an investigation which landed Williams, 53, of Clarendon Road in Broadstone, and Bolt, 52, from High Wycombe, in jail for 20 counts of conspiracy to defraud. Williams is to spend five years and 208 days in prison, and Bolt four-and-a-half years.

But Joan says she wishes the two could be sentenced to hard labour for the damage they caused to their elderly victims.

"My friend has gone rapidly downhill since all that happened," she says. "She has never been able to speak about it - it's as if she can't bring herself to admit what happened. I suppose she's always prided herself in managing all right, but she isn't really, now.

"It's evil, really evil, I think, to treat old people like that.

Joan thinks the best way to deal with the problem is for the police, or other agencies, to visit homes and day centres for elderly people and explain to them, face-to-face, why they should not answer the door to cold-callers.

The Trickster musical does this by touring throughout the South West, telling the story of an elderly man who has been a victim of distraction burglary.

Trickster is funded by the Home Office, local councils and the Police Partnership Trust. For more information, call 01202 222814.

First published: Sept 9