Sydney builder Matthew Geoffrey Rixon jailed for nearly two years

Matthew Geoffrey Rixon was serving a sentence in the community and wearing a monitoring anklet when he took tens of thousands of dollars for fences — that he didn’t finish.

A dodgy Sydney builder has been sentenced to almost two years in jail.

Serial offender Matthew Geoffrey Rixon, who has at least six aliases, will remain behind bars until August next year after pleading guilty to 18 acts of contempt.

The start date for the sentence was November 2021 because Rixon was already in prison for earlier offences.

It is the third time the 37-year-old has been convicted of ignoring a 2013 court order that was supposed to stop him from performing residential building work without a licence.

Matthew Rixon arrives at the Downing Centre in Sydney in 2020. Picture: NCA NewsWire

The latest conviction was secured after several NSW victims raised the alarm about five fencing jobs across Sydney in late 2018.

Rixon pocketed a total of nearly $50,000 in payments for the jobs but either never commenced the work or did it only partially and, in some cases, abominably.

In sentencing, Justice Hament Dhanji noted the court had been told that Rixon had taken the jobs while still serving a non-parole period for the second contempt conviction, after being released from prison early as part of an ankle bracelet pilot program.

Judge Dhanji said “the engagement in each (2018) job showed a serious disregard for the authority” of the court, because it happened “during the course of the earlier sentence” and “the defendant sought to minimise the prospect of detection by establishing” an elaborate company structure.

There was also an absence of “any real contrition,” the judge said.

An earlier image of Rixon, issued by NSW Fair Trading.

The jobs Rixon took were in Spring Farm, Narara, Eastwood, Bensville and Belrose.

NSW Fair Trading Minister Eleni Petinos said Rixon’s conviction highlighted “the importance of consumers checking the credentials of builders and other tradespeople before engaging a contractor for work and serves as a warning for other would-be offenders that they will be caught.”

Rixon’s first contempt conviction was in 2014. He was sentenced to 18 months’ jail, which was wholly suspended; instead he had to do 300 hours of community service.

The judge who sentenced Rixon for the second contempt conviction described him as a “serial offender”.

Rixon was jailed in Victoria for five months last year on fraud offences.

Rixon also “has further offences outstanding in Queensland”, Judge Dhanji said.