A HOARDER who acted like a fly-tipper in reverse by collecting scrap and taking it home is facing jail for breaching environmental regulations.

Jonathan Wright had already been convicted and had the grounds of his home in North Yorkshire cleared when he secretly started collecting rubbish again.

The 55-year-old tried to shake off surveillance teams tailing him on his late-night visits to a council-run household waste site with a torch and van.

His activities were described as "furtive scurrying" and "foraging" by investigators during a trial at Teesside Crown Court which came to an end yesterday.

A jury found Wright guilty of carrying out a waste operation without a licence, but cleared him of another charge of fly-tipping tyres in a layby.

In November 2011, a team of contractors and Environment Agency staff spent two days clearing Wright's garden after he was convicted of storing waste without a permit.

After the clearance, he signed an agency pledge that he would not store waste and that he understood it posed a danger to other Mowbray Road residents.

But just two months later, after receiving tip-offs from neighbours, Environment Agency investigators found he had again begun storing waste material there.

Officers told the court that Wright used the pavement outside the semi-detached home he shares with his elderly mother as his breaker’s yard.

They said he flattened and ripped apart metal items on the street by using an angle grinder, a sledgehammer and even reversing over them in a van.

After setting up cameras outside the house, over a three-month period, investigators saw Wright repeatedly return late at night with a range of scrap items.

Investigator Cathy Bedworth said: “I would describe the activity as furtive scurrying. I thought he was aware that he might be under observation.”

She said Wright sorted the scrap in his house and garden and used his flat-bed truck to store a mass of compressed metal, which he sold to an unknown merchant.

Another investigator followed Wright to the Catterick Bridge Household Waste site, and he “attempted some anti-surveillance manouveres” in his van.

Michael Robotham said: "He was wandering about with a torch. I could hear him rummaging around in one of the skips. It was the sound of someone foraging for metal.”

Wright will be sentenced next month after background reports have been prepared by the Probation Service, and he was given bail until his next appearance.

Judge Peter Armstrong warned him that all options - including prison - will be considered for what he called "a blatant breach" of the earlier court order.