A Nottinghamshire carer who fleeced an elderly man of £125,000 to pay for a lavish holiday and to fund her gambling habit has been jailed for six years. A trial at Nottingham Crown Court heard how in less than two years, Anne Hill drained Louis Woodward’s bank account of his cash after she gained power of attorney over his affairs. The 57-year-old would regularly travel from her Harworth home to visit Mr Woodward, a man in his 80s, in Blyth and used the stolen money to fund her addiction to online gambling.
Her offending included a large volume of online transfers from the victim’s account directly into hers– totalling £125,164.96 between August 2019 and April 2021. This money originated in part from Mr Woodward’s current and savings accounts, which were completely emptied and left overdrawn at the time of the defendant’s arrest in April 2021.
But a large proportion of the money also originated from three drawdowns from a lifetime mortgage product held by Mr Woodward and secured against his home. At Hill’s request, total funds of £93,697 were released into the victim’s account, before being transferred into her own account. Sending her to prison, Judge Mark Watson said: “This was a betrayal of the very significant trust placed in you.
You deliberately targeted him because of his vulnerabilities. "You took what you wanted, when you wanted it, stripping him of his life savings and then trying to take even more." The trial heard how when Hill was arrested afte.
