Three vigilantes have been jailed for confronting, beating, and violently kidnapping at knife-point a purported landlord who fleeced them out of a deposit for an uninhabitable flat.

Zaire Jackson-Burchall, 27, Jah’rico Smith-Gardiner, 25, and his sister Shanikae Smith-Gardiner, 28, kidnapped the Bradford-based fraudster into a car in broad daylight and drove him to Sheffield where he was tortured.

Bradford Crown Court heard that over a seven-hour period, the man was blindfolded, threatened, punched, slapped, and offered water from a dog bowl before being rescued by police.

The frightening experience left the man with cuts, bruises, and a nail torn from his finger.

In the meantime, the man’s  father received a telephone call demanding £5,000 for the safe return of his son. The father, “in terror”, went to a bank to withdraw the cash.

The court heard that Shanikae Smith-Gardiner had responded to an advertisement for a flat to rent in Bradford and was driven there from Sheffield on August 11, 2022, by Jackson-Burchall.

She met the purported landlord, withdrew £400 as a deposit, and paid it to him.

But the property was found to be in an abandoned-looking building. Jackson-Burchall messaged him to complain it was a scam, threatened to go to the police, and demanded “just send the money back”. No reply was received.

The trio asked a friend to make a fake inquiry to the purported landlord about one of his properties and to arrange to meet the very next day so they could extract revenge.

Wearing balaclavas, they met the purported landlord in the Barkerend area and, in a confrontation caught on CCTV, hit him twice on the head with a rock, threatened him at knife-point, and chased him down the street before forcing him into a car in front of shocked witnesses.

Prosecutor Felicity Hemlin said: “There was a clear intention to get [him] to a place where they could confront him, effectively acting in a vigilante manner.

“There is clearly provocation here. Someone has been defrauded out of a few hundred pounds. One may think that whatever action [occurred] didn’t merit the extent of what was meted out thereafter.”

No victim personal statement was submitted.

The court heard that the purported landlord was restrained and assaulted in Sheffield and subjected to what the judge said was “an attempt at water-boarding” as hot water was poured over his face whilst he was blindfolded.

Other evidence presented by the purported landlord was said to be “unreliable” and “exaggerated”.

Jah’rico Smith-Gardiner pleaded guilty to kidnap, false imprisonment, and blackmail. His sister Shanikae Smith-Gardiner and Zaire Jackson-Burchall were found guilty at trial of kidnap and false imprisonment but acquitted of blackmail.

Mitigating, Phillip Mahoney said the kidnapping and false imprisonment were a “spontaneous escalation” that came about as a result of the the confrontation and were not pre-meditated.

He said: “It’s one thing to say that the fraud was for a few hundred pounds. The conduct that [the purported landlord] was engaging in with a lot of other people is, in its own way, quite despicable.

“It is targeted, predatory defrauding of people at the bottom of society who have very little money living in an age when affordable housing is desperately short.

“Those are the people that [the purported landlord] chose to fleece.”

Judge Burn commented: “The evidence at the trial made it quite clear, in my view, that this was the latest in a series of advertisements in respect of flats or other properties which either didn’t exist, were occupied, or were in such a state as to be unoccupiable “I accept that you felt you had been defrauded.

“The right course of action for all of you would have been to have gone to the police as complainants in a fraud allegation.

“Instead because of the choices that you took at that time and the actions that you subsequently took, you now fall for sentence as convicted defendants in a case in which [the purported landlord] is the complainant.

“It is clear from the jury’s verdicts that they did not consider [the purported landlord] to be an entirely reliable witness. In my judgment his account of the circumstances of the kidnap is generally borne out.

“However his continuing assertion that the trigger for this incident was nothing to do with fraudulent activity in the face of substantial evidence to the contrary, coupled with his taking advantage of the privilege against self-incrimination as a witness, even on matters which were not connected with those allegations of fraud, undoubtedly drove the jury to the conclusion that his account of events at Popple Street was either untrue in some parts or exaggerated in others.”

The judge sentenced Zaire Jackson-Burchall to six years and eight months in prison for each case of kidnap and false imprisonment, to run concurrently.

Shanikae Smith-Gardiner received five years for each count, to run concurrently.

Jah’rico Smith-Gardiner was handed a five-year sentence for kidnap and false imprisonment, plus 18 months for blackmail to run concurrently.

Judge Burn imposed an indefinite restraining order on all three to prevent them contacting the complainant in future.

On publication this story referred to ‘landlord’. It has been amended to use the term ‘purported landlord’.