Bride told to pay back just £34k of £200k she stole from care home
The extra money went to pay for her £24,000 wedding and honeymoon, a new car and then a luxury holiday.
Dobson, of Witham, Essex, was jailed for two years and four months in March last year for theft between July 2012 and July 2014.
But a proceeds of crime hearing at Chelmsford Crown Court yesterday was told she only has £34,065 left – less than a fifth of the amount she stole.
Recorder Giles Eyre gave the fraudster three months to pay back the £34,065 and she faces an extra nine-month jail term if she fails to do so.
The ruling outraged charity chiefs who say as much as £42million in money and property is stolen each year from care home residents. Action on Elder Abuse estimates 413,500 people a year aged 65 or over experience some form of financial abuse.
But the number of successful convictions – just 3,012 in England and Wales last year – represents less than one per cent of those crimes.
Charity director Stephen McCarthy said: “We are campaigning, and will continue to campaign, to ensure a much higher proportion of these kinds of offences reach the courts than the pitiful amounts that we currently see.
“We will also continue to push for prison sentences for the most serious offences, instead of the all too common community service orders and fines, until such a time as those who prey on vulnerable older people have a genuine fear of significant consequences to their actions.”
At the time of Dobson’s conviction prosecutor Andrew Jackson said: “In 2013 she was marrying again and needed to pay for her wedding and she could not afford the sort of wedding she wanted.
“She paid for her own wedding which she told police had cost about £20,000 and on top of that a honeymoon to the tune of £4,000, all of which were funded by the ongoing fraud.
“It was a gross breach of the trust that the company placed in her.
“She played a leading role – she was the author of this fraud – there was an abuse of her position of trust and responsibility.”