Leeds single mum paid landscaper £4,000 for new garden – but says he never did the work

A single mum-of-four says she lost almost £4,000 to a landscaper after he allegedly asked for money upfront and failed to carry out the work.

Jordan Meakin was hired by Sohal Navdeep in August 2023 to transform the front and back garden of his property to allow his four children an outdoor place to play.

Sohal, 42, from Kirkstall, Leeds, works two jobs and says it took him over a year to save the money to afford the home renovations he craved.

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The mother says she found Meakin’s company on Facebook and arranged for him to come and give her a quote. She said she arrived and gave him a quote of £2200 for the back garden and a further £2700 for the front garden.

Sohal says Meakin asked for the money up front by bank transfer of the full £2,200 for the back garden and a £1,600 deposit for the front garden, which he said was for materials. She says the landscaper also told her to hire a skip, which cost her another £250 and was ultimately never used.

She claims Meakin showed her pictures on his phone and designed the garden in front of her, she said he even promised her a free baby swing and she initially thought it was a dream come true and was so excited about the garden They.

Sohal said: “I found Jordan Meakin on Facebook, he said he could do the garden, he came to my house in August 2023 for a quote, he said it would be £2200 for the back garden and £2700 for the front garden. , I even said it was very cheap, I said I was happy with the price and wanted to go ahead.

“He said he’d do the back garden first and then the front, I said ok that’s fine, he said he needed the full money for the back to front garden which was £2200 and he needed £1600 up front for the front garden which I agreed to.

“He designed the whole garden in front of me there and then, he was showing me pictures on his phone, I have no previous experience with tradesmen, I’ve never done anything before so I had no reason not to believe him. He even told me he would give me a free swing for my kids, I was so happy I was so excited for my kids.

“He pressured me to transfer the money there and then when he was there he said he would order the materials immediately. He said to me, “I’m not bothering you and your dear children anymore, I’ll go and order the materials in my van”, I noticed when he left that he wasn’t in a van, he was in a car and I seemed strange”.

Sohal continued: “He came back later with about ten flags and put them down, the work was unsatisfactory, very unprofessional, he didn’t do anything he said he would do. After that he never came back, asked me to hire a skip which cost me another £250 and was empty so money wasted too.

“I messaged him and he keeps saying he’ll do it next month, next month, next month all the time – it’s been almost a year and I still don’t have my garden.

“I told him ‘Jordan if you can’t give me the money back,’ he said he couldn’t return the money, he paid for the materials but he didn’t pay, the ten flags he threw away. in the garden it must not have cost more than a few hundred pounds, and I could have done it myself.

“It’s been an absolute nightmare, I’m so depressed, I work so hard, I’ve got two jobs, it took me a year to save that money, the garden still isn’t done and I can’t afford to pay it off again. , It’s not fair.

“My whole family is very upset, I cried, the children were affected, they have no garden to play in now, it’s just mud, the money I spent I could have taken them on holiday, now I can’t. Do that, I put my kids through saying ‘don’t cry mom, we don’t even like to play’ but of course they are kids.”

Sohal has since reached out to other customers of Jordan Meakin’s on social media to try and find out if it happened to anyone else.

She said: “I have contacted a solicitor but I can’t afford the fees I have already lost so much I just don’t want anyone else to go through what I have been through I have contacted people who like the posts his. to warn them”.

Another person who claims to have lost money to Jordan Meakin is Paul Howes, a 25-year-old engineer, also from Leeds.

Paul has a very similar account to Sohal, he says he found Jordan on Facebook earlier this year when he needed help completing his garden renovation project, he got in touch with Jordan and arranged for him to come and give him a quote.

Paul says Jordan visited his home on May 10th and gave him a quote for the work required, said he seemed really professional and, like with Sohal, was showing him photos of his work and even his own on his phone House. .

The father-of-two said Jordan asked him for a £1,200 advance for materials and said he would return the following week to carry out the work, but never did.

Paul says he also faced several excuses as to why Jordan couldn’t do the promised work, but it wasn’t until he received an Instagram message from Sohal that he realized he’d lost.

He said: “I found Jordan on Facebook, I’m in the middle of setting up my garden and have done a lot of it myself but got to the point where I needed a bit of help.

“I texted him and arranged for him to come and give me a quote, he came to visit on Friday 10th May, it was around 8.30pm, he turned up like a pro and looked like he knew what he was talking about.

“He was showing me pictures on the phone of other work he had done, I know quite a bit about landscaping so I had some knowledge and what he was saying seemed to be legit, I am a bit wary though as I have been done in the past , but he seemed quite genuine, even showing me pictures of his own house.

“He asked for the money to cover the material up front so I transferred £1200 and he agreed to come back and do the job, from there he just made excuse after excuse why he couldn’t do it . It was everything from his car being broken down and he was on vacation, he was in the hospital.

“I started to worry a bit, but it wasn’t until I got a message from a woman called Sohal on Instagram warning me not to use it and saying she’d taken almost £4,000 that I realized that I had been deceived.

“From there I started doing some research on him and found out he had been to prison before for fraud and the penny just dropped, I was actually impressed with how genuine he came across, I literally said to my partner, ” if he is a con man he is a very good one’, he is obviously very good at what he does.

“Now I have to do the garden myself, £1200 is a lot of money that could have gone to materials and paying someone else to help.

“Now I started messaging other people on his Instagram account. I’ve accepted that I probably won’t get my money back, but even if it stops one more person being ripped off.”

Jordan Meakin said the two plaintiffs’ claims were “absolute nonsense”. Speaking to Yorkshire Live, he said: “All customers have been kept informed of our delays due to unforeseen circumstances and bad weather, some are happy and patient, others are asking for refunds.

“Anyway I’m in the hospital, they took my gall bladder out on Tuesday, nobody got stolen, I’ve been busy and I’ve got issues causing delays, it’s not murder.”

In response to Sohal’s claims, Jordan said: “Sohal did his back garden for £3800, paid me in full, then asked me to come back to do the front a few weeks later. We showed up several times coming from Manchester costing me a lot of money and there were jumps on the road from other builders which caused me so many delays when we could have been working for someone somewhere else so I finally told her to get someone else to do it as I’m sick of her messing with me, she never paid me a dime for my face.”

Mr Meakin was previously jailed after posing as the wife of a former Blackburn Rovers footballer to fraudulently sell a £7,500 Rolex watch on eBay that he never owned. according to The Lancashire Telegraph.

In March 2019, Burnley Crown Court heard that Jordan Meakin had previously legitimately sold a Rolex watch that had previously belonged to Leanne Brown, the wife of former Blackburn Rovers and Manchester United defender Wes Brown, to Kevin Robins’ victim.

The court was told Meakin, 35, tried to repeat the trick but this time with a watch that had no connection to Mrs Brown, star of TV’s Real Housewives Of Cheshire.

Meakin tried to fool both Mr Robins and Royal Mail by sending an empty Rolex box in a loosely sealed parcel by special delivery. He also once defrauded Halifax Bank of thousands of pounds by claiming his account had been hacked in Thailand and then tried to claim a £2,500 insurance payout from Royal Mail for the “lost watch”.

He was jailed for 16 months and ordered to pay £900 compensation, with the remaining £6,950 to be paid on release.

Meakin says he has since turned his life around, now married with two children and running a “legitimate” landscaping company, he says he has battled “impatient clients” because of ongoing personal issues.

Asked about his previous convictions, Jordan Meakin said: “Past convictions in the past mean absolutely nothing, it’s all in my past before I was married with kids and now I’m a 100% legitimate businessman.”