Nurse stole £100,000 to play bingo

A care home manager stole £100,000 from a resident and spent the money playing bingo, a tribunal heard.

Carleen Wilkins, 41, withdrew the maximum amount of cash from her 97-year-old victim’s account almost every day between 2012 and 2016. On one occasion she took the pensioner to a bank to withdraw £4,000 in cash.

Wilkins, of Quinton, Birmingham, was banned from the nursing profession for life after serving a 31-month jail term. The Nursing and Midwifery Council, sitting in London, was told that the victim had a distrust of banks and handed control of her finances to Wilkins. She stole £98,730 over a 40-month period and gambled it away at casinos and bingo halls.

Paul Powici, the panel chairman, said: “The conviction in this case is serious, involving dishonesty against a vulnerable patient when in a position of trust. Wilkins’s conduct and behaviour clearly fell far below the standards to be expected of a registered nurse.”