Fraudster family faked brain disorder to con council out of £734,000
THREE family members have admitted defrauding a council of almost £734,000 in what is believed to be one of the largest frauds against a local authority.
Frances Noble, 66, feigned having a brain disorder condition to claim a care package over a 13-year period.
She was convicted along with her daughter and son-in-law, Laura and Philip Borrell, who pleaded guilty to assisting Noble in laundering the proceeds.
The trio succeeded in accessing a ‘direct payments care package’ worth £733,936.20 between August 1, 2005 and November 30, 2018 from Hertfordshire County Council, according to a local newspaper. But instead of spending the funds on Noble’s health, they ‘kept the money for themselves’.
Neighbours of the trio, from the village of Weston, near Hitchin, said while Laura did not appear to work, they saw endless packages arrive. ‘[There were] delivery vans all day long. Ordering lots of stuff, like money was no object,’ one told The Sunday Times. ‘There were Amazon vans coming every single day. And then this brand new topof-the-range Volvo arrived,’ another said.
It is not the first time the family have been in the public eye.
In 2017 Laura Borrell, then 39, was interviewed on This Morning by Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield as ‘one of the youngest people to be diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia’.
A fundraising page set up for a trip to America on the website GoFundMe raised almost £7,000. Hertfordshire County Council are reported to have passed concerns on to fundraising platforms used by the Borrells in its inquiry.
But those who knew them had been suspicious for some time about Borrell’s reported diagnosis, as she had been studying for a law degree, playing the flute and driving. Her uncle John O’Sullivan, 71, last week questioned her ability to play the flute at her grandmother’s funeral in 2018. ‘For someone to get up at my mum’s funeral in the church to play a flute, expertly play the flute... someone who had dementia couldn’t do that,’ he claimed.
The Borrells pleaded guilty to fraud at St Albans Crown Court last week. Noble had pleaded guilty earlier. They are due to be sentenced next month.
About three years ago the trio moved to Germany. The Borrells returned to the UK before their hearing was due but Noble stayed in Germany and continued to deny
‘Amazon vans coming every day’
any wrongdoing. Noble said the guilty pleas were an effort to put an end to a case that they are running out of money to fight.
‘We’re not the dreadful people they’re trying to make us out to be. My daughter gave up [everything] to care for me,’ she said.
A GoFundMe spokesman said: ‘If it is established that misuse has occurred we will offer refunds to all donors.’ Unan Choudhury, a lawyer representing Borrell, said she denies any wrongdoing relating to the dementia.