Revealed: Dubious past of devious fraudster who targeted pensioner

The 61-year-old was found guilty by a jury at Wolverhampton Crown Court of fraud by abuse of position and perverting the course of justice on Tuesday. She faces a jail term when she returns for sentence on April 21.

She returned to the UK in late 2011 after spending 37 years in Australia during which she had two short lived marriages, gave birth to two children and launched a business aimed at fighting the menace of head lice. Its Australian bank account has since been closed, allegedly because of arrears.

Once back in this country she pocketed hundreds of pounds of housing benefit for her rented home from Sandwell Council - and was not entitled to a penny of it.

She kept secret up to £54,000 of savings - possibly compensation for a fall in Australia - which invalidated the claim.

The payments were halted in December 2013 after officials discovered her hidden wealth, shortly after she started her cleaning job at the Black Country home of the elderly blind man.

She appealed against the decision - claiming the money had been mistakenly paid into her account - which was rejected, leaving her with an £800 bill which she later settled in cash. Sandwell Council refused to comment.

Double dealing Robinson then registered as a collector for Help for Heroes twice in less than a week, apparently using different names, dates of birth and addresses.

She signed on to raise money in her own name in April 2014. Five days later she appears to have registered again, this time as Veronica Sprigg, using the surname of a relative.

The alarm was raised after documents linking her with the charity in both names were found following her arrest on March 27 2015. It is unclear what, if any, donations were directly forwarded to the charity through her collections. Help for Heroes declined to discuss the matter when asked for comment.

Robinson’s dealings with the charity and Sandwell Council did not result in criminal proceedings and were not mentioned to the Wolverhampton Crown Court jury that convicted her of fraud by abuse of position and left the woman facing a lengthy prison sentence.

The case centred on her determination to milk the registered blind victim of as much money as possible after deliberately isolating him from friends and family, allowing her to take control of his finances on trips to the bank, dubbed ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ runs.

Experts later said the dementia-sufferer had ‘lacked capacity’ to make rational financial decisions. He could not even subtract three from 100.

But they had to wait for four months before being able to assess him - allowing her to argue that he had been much better when the deal was done.

Robinson callously cancelled GP appointments and blocked four attempts to check his condition between December 2014 and March 26 2015 - when he was finally seen with police assistance - as concern grew over the amount of cash being withdrawing by him on visits to the bank with her.

She was arrested the day after the assessment and released on bail on condition she had no contact with the man.

This was lifted a month later when police handed over the inquiry to Dudley Trading Standards Department who do not have power to bail people - and she immediately started seeing the man again.

By coincidence a visit by one of his children ended on the day her bail ended. His father’s cash withdrawals had fallen markedly during the month Robinson could not take the old man to the bank.

When the son left, there was £2,400 in the old man’s ‘vault’ at the bottom of his wardrobe. Days later that had gone and shortly afterwards police were called when she took the dementia-sufferer to the bank in a failed bid to withdraw a further £1,000.

His anxious son and step son, who both live abroad, had gone to the Court of Protection which looks after the interests of people with limited mental capacity. The family put a cap on the amount of cash he could take from his accounts and the sons were officially put in control of his finances in July 2015, a ruling desperate Robinson unsuccessfully tried to overturn. The following February Robinson was forced to give the family the Beecher Street house she had bought with his money.

Her constant talk of ‘royalties’ from her failed business in Australia - which she later admitted amounted to no more than a few hundred pounds - and her money grabbing behaviour on return to this country would suggest she was strapped for cash.

She did not pay tax in England, had only £600-a-month in child benefit from Australia being paid into her bank accounts and was supposedly paid £8.50p-an-hour in cash for cleaning and 45p-a-shirt ironing chores before she got her hands on the man’s money.

That does not explain how she persuaded an experienced estate agent that she had the funds to buy Beecher Street before receiving the cheque from her employer that bought the property.

She had to prove her wealth matched the bid before it could be accepted and produced a bank book showing she had £200,000 savings that was sufficiently creditable for the offer to be accepted.

She refused to have it photocopied which suggests it was fake but at least one of those involved in the case believes she has a secret store of money hidden under another false name.

Her victim, who knew Robinson by her middle name of Sue, is now 96, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and living in a care home not far from Wolverhampton.

The twice married, highly skilled welder who worked on oil rigs worldwide and was awarded an MBE for services to industry. He served in the North Atlantic during the Second World War.

Friends described him as proud and stubborn. He hated being alone and was registered as blind when a degenerative eye complaint forced him to rely on others for help with issues such as his money.

He had a £1500-a-month pension, over £300,000 savings and an arrangement where his current account was automatically boosted by them when it fell below £2,000 in credit. The system saw £3,800 used for this purpose between January 2012 and July 2013. In the 20 months between August 2013 and March 2015 while Robinson was with him, the figure soared to £40,000.

She started writing cheques and getting him to sign them. Five of these totalled £9,500 in six weeks during September and October 2014. There were almost 30 overall. Meanwhile Mercedes-driving Robinson paid £3,500 cash into one of her bank accounts in five months up to October.

Her besotted employer bought her a £1,000 brooch, the £188,000 house, gave her a £10,000 ‘loan’ and regularly took her out for meals as around £250,000 disappeared from his savings.

She was a dangerously determined woman who muddled fact with fiction in a bid to bend the men in her life to her will, which may explain her two short lived marriages.

Chris King, who led the Dudley Trading Standards investigation, said: “She put a lot of thought into trying to justify her actions and showed no remorse.”

Visitors to the home of the old man she fleeced were stunned by how dirty it was and the ruthless way Robinson controlled him. One said sadly: “She was a cleaner who didn’t clean and a carer who didn’t care. All she was interested in was the money.”