A GANG of travellers who fleeced dozens of vulnerable and elderly people across Hampshire in a gardening scam have been jailed for what the judge called disgusting and depraved behaviour.

The group took tens of thousands of pounds from their victims to such an extent that when one of their caravans was raided police found more than £225,000 in cash - £185,000 of it hidden in a suitcase wrapped in Christmas paper.

A total of 22 people from across Hampshire and beyond were left victims of the gang during a crime spree that saw them overcharge people for work which the court heard was often little more than vandalism.

The ringleader of the group was jailed for seven and a half years for his part in the scam, while two other defendants also received jail terms and the fourth got 100 hours of community service.

Opening the case prosecutor Stephen Parish told how the defendants, Albert Bowers, his wife Margaret Bowers, and Edward and Maurice Smith, would lie to their victims about trees being diseased then offer to cut them down.

Sentencing the group, Judge David Griffiths, said these were offences that were easy to commit, hard to detect and extremely profitable.

He said: "Their usual method was to get people to have unnecessary work done, and then overcharge when they thought they could get away with it, and mostly the work was poor. In my view it was nothing more than vandalism.

"You didn't even consider you were doing anything wrong, and thought this type of behaviour was all in a day's work. I couldn't disagree more and ordinary members of the public will be disgusted by such depraved behaviour."

He jailed Albert Bowers, 46, of Kanes Hill in Thornhill in Southampton to seven and a half years in prison, Maurice Smith, 36, of Attwood Close in Basingstoke and Edward Smith, 37, from Devon to four and a half years all for conspiracy to defraud, while all three also received two-yar concurrent sentences for conspiracy to damage property.

Meanwhile Margaret Bowers, whose 41st birthday it was yesterday, received a 100-hour community punishment order also for conspiracy to defraud after the court heard she acted as the gang's banker.