Repugnant
Grenfell fraud ‘beggars belief’ says judge as he jails survivors’ fund manager for five years
A COUNCIL worker was yesterday jailed for five years for stealing £62,000 from the Grenfell survivors’ fund she ran – as a judge said her ‘repugnant’ crime beggared belief.
Jenny McDonagh was recruited by Kensington and Chelsea Council last October to help survivors rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the tower block disaster.
But instead the shameless 39-year- old finance manager siphoned off cash from a public fund for survivors to go on a ‘frivolous’ spending spree. She blew £48 in lingerie shop Ann Summers, £350 on clothes, £500 on beauty treatments and enjoyed luxury holidays to Dubai, Los Angeles, Paris and Iceland.
She was jailed for five and a half years at Isleworth Crown Court, having indulged in a lavish lifestyle with money that was meant for survivors.
On her birthday, McDonagh posed for the camera, smiling in a £99 Hobbs dress she bought on a credit card set up for a Grenfell victim. McDonagh also spent some of the money at the Food Hall in Selfridges, treated herself to £100 meals out at a lobster restaurant and to a trip on the Thames Clipper, all paid for with the stolen funds.
Yesterday a judge said her dishonesty ‘beggars belief’ as he jailed her for the £62,000 fraud and a previous £35,000 scam when she defrauded an NHS trust while working there as a finance officer.
This week she pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position when she was working at Medway NHS Foundation Trust where she submitted four fake invoices to pay her- Disaster: Grenfell Tower self money through a bogus company in 2016.
She also admitted theft and converting criminal property while she was a finance manager for the Grenfell survivors’ fund a year later.
Judge Robyn Johnson said: ‘I have to sentence many cases that have come to be known as Grenfell frauds. Your offending is unique in my experience.
‘ You knew exactly what these funds were for and the importance of them for the intended recipients, namely the victims of the fire.
‘The scale of your dishonesty in these frauds beggars belief. Members of the public, indeed the nation, were shocked by this dreadful event.
‘The fact that you, a person who had been given the task of assisting in the aftermath, sought to enrich yourself is the more shocking in the light of outpouring of grief and sympathy that followed the disaster.
‘It is a well-known fact that the NHS, funded by the taxpayer, is fully stretched to meet the ever increasing demands on its resources.
‘In my judgment it is an aggravating feature that your dishonesty placed additional strain on the Medway NHS Foundation Trust’s budget.’
The judge said the Grenfell fraud involved stealing funds in a way ‘any member of the public would find repugnant.’
He said a quarter of the Grenfell funds she stole were lost on internet gambling, as it was said her dishonesty had ‘destroyed her marriage’.
Neil Ross, defending, said: ‘ She’s destroyed her own future in effect and has brought all of this down on herself. She is, I would say, a pathetic woman now.’
Council colleagues told investigators McDonagh ‘had very vocal views of the Grenfell fraudsters, often talking openly about how disgusted she was with these people and that what they were doing was awful’.
The court heard McDonagh was also separately investigated for defrauding the V&A museum but was not charged with any offence.
Detective Superintendent Matt Bonner called her ‘a serial fraudster with no compunction for who she targets’.
Yesterday McDonagh wept in the dock and mouthed, ‘I love you, I am sorry, I will be ok,’ to her estranged husband in the public gallery before she was led to the cells.
‘Your offending is unique’