Fraudster faces jail for taking in-laws’ £120,000

A FRAUDSTER faces a jail sentence after pleading guilty to taking more than £120,000 from his in-laws’ bank accounts over a five-year period.

Dan Jacobs, a former member of Borehamwood and Elstree Synagogue in Hertfordshire, admitted five counts of fraud on Monday.

He took a total of £120,573 from his wife’s father and disabled mother, and also from her elderly grandmother, who lives in a care home.

Between 2010 and 2015, Jacobs used cash machines to withdraw money from five bank accounts belonging to the family.

It is believed the Dutch-born father of five was forced to move his wife and children to live with the in-laws after his own home was lost for financial reasons. He then continued to defraud his in-laws while living under their roof.

The 39-year-old fraudster stole most heavily from his wife’s grandmother, infiltrating her Barclays and Lloyds bank accounts to rack up a total sum of £57,953.

He made the withdrawals from February 2012 to August 2013. He also took more than £52,768 from two accounts belonging to his father-in-law, a retail executive.

Jacobs raided his first account between August 2010 and September 2011 and the second between August 2012 and May 2015.

Jacobs, who founded consultancy firm Develop Your Business i n 2010, also stole £9,850 f rom his mother-in-law’s account between September 2010 and April 2012. He was arrested in February and remanded in custody after pleading guilty to all counts on Monday. He is due to be sentenced today at Harrow Crown Court.

Jacobs, of Red Road, Borehamwood, was on the committee that cam- paigned to establish an eruv in the town. He left the team once plans were set in place but before the eruv became functional in 2010.

Jeffrey Israel, Jacobs’s barrister, said he would not comment until after the sentencing. After taking advice from the police, the victims also declined to comment.

Jacobs’s wife took part in a 5km charity run in 2008 to raise funds for a hospital whose doctors and nurses helped to save his son, who required open-heart surgery three times before his third birthday.

Born with life-threatening defects, the boy experienced his first surgery when he was just one week old.

A senior figure in the Borehamwood community said Jacobs gave up his synagogue membership some time ago, adding: “The whole thing is a shame.”

Jacobs attended the Maimonides school in the Netherlands before emigrating to Britain in 1997, where he worked for accountancy firms KPMG and Arram Berlyn Gardner.

He used cash machines to withdraw money from five accounts belonging to the family