Cash scam mum to pay back just £1,800
A FRAUDSTER from Rainhill who scammed family members out of their life savings must pay back just £1,800 of her £166,000 ill-gotten gains.
Michelle Dougherty persuaded her cousin Susan’s husband Simon Partridge to hand over some £111,000 during a 14-month period.
She claimed to run a wedding make-up company, with exclusive rights for events at the ECHO Arena, and links to top fashion magazines.
The 37-year-old said she was making £800,000-a-year and developing an old farm and country hall in Cheshire for her burgeoning spa firm.
She backed up the claims by driving new BMW and Mercedes cars, flaunting jewellery and the latest mobile phones, and taking expensive holidays.
The crook even paid for her fouryear-old daughter to attend the private Alderley Edge School for Girls in Cheshire and bought her a pony.
But in reality unemployed Dougherty was a bankrupt single mum, living on income support and housing benefit, in a council house in St Ann Place, Rainhill.
She was jailed for three years at Liverpool Crown Court in March, after admitting three counts of fraud.
A Proceeds Of Crime Application hearing has now been held to try and recover the money she conned out of her victims.
Gerald Baxter, prosecuting, said she benefited from her non-existent busi- ness scam to the tune of £166,528.
However, the court heard her available assets were now deemed to be just £1,800.
The judge, Recorder Simon Parrington, ordered her to repay the money within three months, or face an additional month in prison.
Dougherty also tricked Mr Partridge’s brother Jonathan out of around £20,000 and defrauded her cousin Ian Dougherty, who lost £31,500.
Simon Partridge and his wife were left on only one income, after Mr Partridge gave up his job, based on the supposed strength of the investments.
The court heard Dougherty had talked him into part-financing an ‘exciting opportunity’ for her to run spas at Center Parcs locations, and buy a lodge.
The sentencing judge, Recorder David Turner, QC, said: “You totally misled them into handing over all of their life savings.
“You have destroyed the life of the two people sat behind you and one cannot help but feel very, very sorry for them.”
Henry Blackshaw, defending on that occasion, said she ‘led a somewhat Walter Mitty existence’.
Mr Blackshaw said: “She struck upon this plan, which plainly snowballed, and a lie that then had to be perpetuated to allow her to make easy money – very regrettably at other people’s expense.”