Clients of an Auckland landscape gardener say they've been duped out of thousands of dollars by paying for work that was never completed.
Gardener Brent Ryan was convicted of fraud after a Three investigation.
Now new clients have come forward to Newshub alleging Ryan is at it again.
When Myra Currie wanted to do up her garden, she thought she'd found just the man for the job.
So she paid Ryan from Gardening Services Auckland $2500 up front, but he didn't show up for six months.
When he did, he took a chainsaw to the wrong tree.
And when she complained, he disappeared - without returning to finish the job.
Ryan promised several times to refund the money. Months later he paid back less than a fifth of it.
More important than the money to Ms Currie is that she feels her garden was ruined.
"It's pretty disappointing because I've just turned 80, and how much longer have I got to start again. Who knows?" she says.
Across Auckland, a man - who we'll call Sunny as he did not want to be named - hired Ryan for work in October last year.
He paid him $2500 up front. Ryan never completed the job - and again, he promised to refund the money. Sunny never saw a cent.
"For someone who's bought their first house trying to get their finances together. This is a huge blow. This is a huge blow," Sunny says.
It's a pattern Ryan has exhibited before.
He was convicted in 2015 of three counts of obtaining by deception for landscaping work that was never done.
At his sentencing the judge called it "a particularly mean-spirited piece of repeat and premeditated offending".
"You ran a landscaping business, you variously took into your confidence different property owners, had deposits paid and failed to undertake the work you promised to do for them. That was a particularly mean-spirited piece of repeat and premeditated offending," the judge said.
All of this sounds familiar to Ken D'Souza who Campbell Live spoke to in 2014.
He hired Ryan to landscape his garden and paid him the same, large up-front deposit.
Ryan never completed the job.
"It left me out of pocket $2500. And something we've worked hard for, saved for, and for someone to just take it away and not do anything, it doesn't gel with me at all," Mr D'Souza says.
At the time, 16 people complained about their experiences with Gardening Services Auckland - in total, they said he owed $40,000.
Ryan promised to pay them all back. Mr D'Souza only ever saw $25.
We contacted Ryan to ask him why these new customers have not been refunded. He told us they'd be paid before this story went to air.
And on the weekend, he did return some of that money. Ms Currie's son received about $1,000 - half of what Ryan promised to refund.
The rest are still waiting months or years later to see the thousands of dollars they're owed.
Newshub.
