OAP’s ‘cash vanished after she gave PC son and wife bank card’
AN elderly widow was ‘shocked and stunned’ to find large sums of cash missing from her bank account after she entrusted her card to her policeman son and his WPC wife, a court heard yesterday.
Gladys Rough, 86, told how she gave her card to daughterin-law Jean Rough to get her groceries as there was only one small shop in her village and she did not drive.
She said that she normally spent about £30 a week on shopping, and also asked Jean to withdraw £40-£50 a week cash for her so that she could pay her gardener and cleaner.
Concerns were raised after council officials checked her account to see if she needed to make contributions to home care, the OAP told Stirling Sheriff Court.
Mrs Rough, who described herself as ‘very cautious over finances’ said she could not understand payments that were going out of the account.
She was giving evidence by video link at the trial of Andrew and Jean Rough, of Alloa, Clackmannanshire. The couple, both 58, deny embezzling £85,705 from Mrs Rough, having been entrusted with her financial affairs, between September 2010 and July 2015.
Mrs Rough claimed that her daughter-in-law and her son Andrew had been the only people with access to her card.
She said: ‘I gave Jean my card to get my shopping. I told her just to hang onto it.
‘I trusted Jean in every way. When statements came in I gave them straight to Jean. I didn’t even open them.”
Prosecutor Sarah Lumsden asked Mrs Rough how she felt when she saw there was money going out of her account which she had not spent herself.
She replied: ‘I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked because it was quite a large amount.
‘I never said anything to Andrew and Jean. I didn’t want to cause any trouble.
‘I was stunned and didn’t know what to think.
‘I didn’t know where the money was going because Andrew and Jean were the only ones who had my card – no other body.
Mrs Rough, of Gargunnock, Stirlingshire, whose husband died last year, added: ‘I was more or less saddened that they had done such a thing. I always trusted them.’
She said in evidence earlier that she had given her son and his wife permission to use her bank card for themselves ‘if they were short’ of money.
The widow added: ‘I was meaning groceries. I never grudged them anything.
‘I didn’t mean buying clothes or something like that.
‘I mean ordinary, everyday messages.’
Miss Lumsden asked: ‘What about buying a summer house for their garden or purchasing laser eye surgery?’
Mrs Rough replied: ‘No, no way. Mind you, if they’d asked.’
The court also heard earlier that in 2015, Mrs Rough’s phone, which also allowed the operation of her emergency care alarm, was cut off after a cash machine withdrawal of £300 at an ATM in Alloa two days earlier.
She was left with only 37 pence in her account and therefore her direct debit to her phone provider bounced.
The court was also told that her son Andrew, a police sergeant who had been based in Falkirk, had now left the police.
The trial, before Sheriff William Gilchrist and jury, continues.