Elijah Gavin, 29, a British national from Northern Ireland, who was living illegally in the US, has been jailed for four years after admitting to participating in a multi-state construction and money laundering fraud scheme that netted more than a million dollars.

At a trial at the US District Court in Rhode Island, the US authorities said Gavin was a ‘conman traveller’, who with his fellow co-conspirators, went around the east coast giving low quotes to potential customers, then ramping up the price once someone agreed to the building work. Their earnings were then processed through money laundering connnections.

Opearting across towns on the east coast, US prosecutors said Gavin used various names when he approached and defrauded property owners in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York by, among other things, misrepresenting to property owners’ construction needs or repairs required on their properties, a US court was told.