Crooked cleaner locked up for conning veteran with Alzheimer's out of £200,000

Veronica Robinson, who started work at the Black Country home of the man, now 96, in August 2013, isolated the wealthy man from friends and family, allowing her to take control of his money.

The scheming 61-year-old spent £188,000 of his savings buying a house for herself while a further £67,000 remains unaccounted for after being withdrawn in cash from his bank accounts during the time she was employed by him.

Robinson from High Haden Road, Cradley Heath, of previous good character, was convicted by a jury of fraud by abuse of position and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

How crooked cleaner preyed on veteran

Crooked cleaner Veronica Robinson was hungry for cash from the moment she arrived back in this country in late 2011 after spending 37 years in Australia.

She had two short-lived marriages while Down Under, 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.

The 61-year-old lived for a short time with her sister before finding rented accommodation of her own, claiming hundreds of pounds worth of housing benefit to which she was not entitled after failing to declare £54,000 savings.

Sandwell Council officials discovered her hidden wealth and halted the payments in December 2013, shortly after she started her £8.50p-an-hour cleaning job at the Black Country home of the blind dementia sufferer from whom she would fiddle almost £250,000.

She told the local authority the money they found in her bank account had been paid by mistake but the appeal was rejected, leaving her with an £800 bill, which she later settled in cash. The 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, the surname of a relative.

It is unclear what, if any, donations were directly forwarded to the charity through her collections. Help for Heroes declined to discuss the matter.

Cashing in on victim's disabilities

Then she began fleecing her vulnerable employer who knew Robinson by her middle name of Sue. He is now 96, suffering from Alzheimer's and living in a care home not far from Wolverhampton.

The twice married, highly-skilled welder 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 proud of his physique, regularly going to the gym into his 90s.

Robinson played on his vanity and cashed in on his disabilities. He suffered from dementia and a degenerative eye complaint that left him registered as blind and left him dependent on others for help with his finances. She spread lies about neighbours that fractured friendships with those who had supported him since the death of his second wife in 2005.

The locks on the property were changed as mother of two Robinson took him on trips to the bank dubbed 'Bonnie and Clyde' runs but the joke turned sour as withdrawals from his accounts soared from £1,000 to almost £6,000 a month.

He had a £1,500-a-month pension, more than £300,000 savings and an arrangement where his current account was automatically boosted from savings 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 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 earning £8.50p-an-hour in cash for cleaning and 45p-a-shirt for ironing chores before she got her hands on the man's money.

Cash, cheques, 'loans' and presents

She wrote cheques and got him to sign them. Five of these totalled £9,500 in six weeks during September and October 2014. Mercedes-driving Robinson paid £3,500 cash into one of her bank accounts in five months.

Her besotted employer bought her a £1,000 brooch, gave her a £10,000 'loan', regularly took her out for meals and then bought her an £188,000 house in Beecher Street, Halesowen into which she moved in January 2015.

Three months later, on March 27, she was arrested and gave the house to his estate in February this year after the intervention of the Court of Protection that makes decisions on financial and welfare matters for people who lack the mental capacity to do so themselves. He could not even subtract three from 100.

Experts had to wait for four months before being able to assess him – allowing her to argue 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 withdrawn by him.

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 – which does not have the power to bail people – and she immediately started seeing him again.