£46,000 spree of ex-mayoress who f leeced old soldier
A FORMER mayoress stole £46,000 from a 98-year- old widower after she found him wandering confused in the street.
Stephanie Todd, 57, who was also a Ukip councillor, said she took Philip Wall ‘under her wing’ and looked after him because he had no-one else.
But she abused the ex-serviceman’s trust to systematically empty his bank account. While continuing her crimes, she even stood for Parliament as a Ukip candidate in the 2015 general election.
She is now facing jail after being convicted of theft at Teesside Crown Court.
Todd first met Mr Wall, who had served in Egypt during the Second World War, when she saw him walking around confused in August 2013.
Over a period of three years Todd, from Catterick, North Yorkshire, withdrew tens of thousands of pounds from his accounts and took herself on shopping sprees with his card.
Prosecutor Paul Newcombe said: ‘She had found him wandering a street in Richmond, confused, and she took him under her wing, so to speak, and began to help him.
‘Was this a cynical exercise on her part, targeting a vulnerable man for her own purposes or was this simply the act of a good Samaritan? The Crown say the evidence points to the former.’
Todd had been mayoress of Richmond Town Council for a number of years until 2016.
She blamed the excessive spending on her victim, but the jury heard he was known to be frugal.
She persuaded Mr Wall to change solicitors and write a new will, leaving his home and contents to her rather than a cat charity he supported.
He had picked the charity because his late wife had a passion for cats.
When Todd took the pensioner to a legal office to alter the will, she joked it was because otherwise ‘ there are going to be some very rich cats out there’. Todd, who was said
‘Targeting a vulnerable man’
to have been in ‘dire financial straits’, was then left as its chief beneficiary.
Lisa Potts, a local solicitor, had a lasting power of attorney and all Mr Wall’s bank statements were sent to her firm. But she became suspicious when her office stopped receiving his statements.
She visited the elderly man fearing he was being ‘manipulated’ and raised the matter with the police who then arrested Todd.
Mr Wall, who spent 30 years working in overseas telephony for the Post Office, British Telecom and then BT, was too frail to give evidence or be cross-examined.
A date for her sentencing is yet to be set.