Pair plundered£30,000 fromfrail widow, 81

Joanne Ginley

A COUPLE befriended a frail and elderly neighbour before systematically plundering her bank accounts of more than 30,000, a court heard.

Drug user Michelle Cooper, 29, and her 48-year-old then-boyfriend, Mark Boyd Smith, even got Jean Beaumont, 81, who suffered from diabetes and memory loss, to cut her own niece and nephew out of her will and leave the vast majority of her estate to her neighbours.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Ken Green, prosecuting, told Bradford Crown Court they lived near the widow in Great Horton, Bradford, and befriended her in 2006 when she was comfortably off.

They were given power of attorney over her financial affairs and property and by June 2007, as her mental condition deteriorated, they agreed to be responsible for her daily medication. But in May 2008, Bradford social services officers found her hair unkempt, her toenails long and dirty and she had lost a lot of weight.

More than 30,000 had been taken from her accounts with the money spent on holidays, clothes, drug debts and even to pay one of Cooper’s court fines.

Smith, of Haycliffe Road, Bradford, was jailed for five years after admitting seven charges of fraud and offences of possessing heroin and crack cocaine with intent to supply, committed while on bail.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Smith, of Ebeneezer Place, Bradford, was jailed for two-and-a-half years after pleading guilty to the fraud offences and a charge of possessing more than 5,500 in criminal property.

Stephen Wood, for Smith, said Cooper was responsible for taking the money, but his client’s culpability was that he had failed to stop her. Yunus Valli, for Cooper, said she took the view it was joint offending by the couple.

Related topics: