A jury has cleared a 24-year-old man of two counts of fraud by deception.

Richard Melhuish, from Aldermaston, near Reading, was alleged to have been one of four men who visited 48-year-old Robert Boulter, a man with learning difficulties, to carry out a fake rat deinfestation at his home in Howard Street, East Oxford. During the trial, Melhuish told the court he had just been at the house as a cleaner, after being offered the work by another man. He said the man, known as Jonathan Lee Jones, had picked him up from his home and taken him to Howard Street.

He said he was told to put on protective clothing and clean the rooms on the ground floor. Jones had asked him to make notes in a notebook about rat droppings on the floor and had dictated what he should write.

Earlier, the jury heard that Mr Boulter had paid £2,000 for the work. When he tried to withdraw another £5,000, alarmed staff at the Lloyds TSB branch in Temple Cowley called the police.