A frail 73-year old woman from North Devon had been saving for almost all her life when suddenly, her life savings of £34K had gone missing from her account. Alarmed at the site of an empty bank account (bearing just 18p), her 49-year old daughter and carer, Sharron Morgan contacted the police. It was the week before Christmas last year when they made the grim discovery.
Had the chronically ill pension been a target for scammers? No, it was something far more sinister – her own daughter! Exeter Crown Court heard how Barbara Brown’s daughter contacted the authorities after trying to make a cash withdrawal from an empty bank account, but despite pilfering away more than £34K over a 4-year period, Sharon was oblivious to what had happened, so effectively she was alerting authorities to her own actions!
Where had the money gone? Sharon told her mother an elaborate story, one where she blamed the bank’s computer systems when the money finally ran out, but the truth was she had been gambling away her savings in online bingo for years! The courts were told that Sharon is now undergoing treatment for gambling addiction.
The Plot Unfolds
Barbara who suffers from a range of debilitating illnesses dropped to six-and-a-half stone through anguish and worry. It’s suggested that the daughter started to gambling through bingo games when taking high doses of opioid painkillers and because of her arthritis, she is unable to work and is living off benefits, so any repayments are out of the question! Halifax has however, refunded £28,000 back to Mrs Brown.
The sentencing was pretty lenient…
…with Judge Timothy Rose ordering Sharon to two years in jail, suspended for two years while imposing a curfew on her for 6-month and ordered that she do 15-days of rehabilitation. There were mitigating circumstances for the sentencing; Sharon had been subjected to years of physical and psychological abuse and because of this, her mental health had plummeted to an all-time low.
Judge Rose said: “What you did to your own mother was exceptionally mean and profoundly dishonest. Whatever your own weaknesses and personal problems, and I accept you were not in a position of strength, or that you have not had a happy or easy life, you simply stole her entire life savings. She had a number of very serious conditions, one of them terminal. You may have had your own problems, but you were more robust than your mother.”
Richard Crabb, defending, said the daughter led an unhappy life and had spiralled out of control from 2016; “Her behaviour was totally out of character, unsophisticated and bound to be discovered. She turned to gambling as a source of comfort and escape, but it brought nothing but misery.”
Source: “Daughter Stole Mum’s Life Savings for Online Bingo”. North Devon Gazette. September 17, 2020.
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Comments (1)
TinTinn
09/21/20, 07:09:32 AM
How could anyone do that to their own mother! That’s one hell of a lot of money to blow on gambling! Even more of a surprise is that her bank actually refunded almost all of it! How rare is that?
