A CARE home boss styled herself “Lady Glanister” and bought 15 fur coats, jewellery and champagne after stealing £330,000 from her employer and disabled residents.

Jenny Glanister, 51, turned to crime after becoming hooked on a jewellery shopping channel, a court heard. The finance manager at two care homes for adults with learning difficulties stole £338,805 between 2004 and 2010, which she used to pay for her shopping habit, heating and petrol.

The cash included £72,923 taken from residents’ accounts which she spent on items including tights and spray tan, Northampton Crown Court heard. When police raided her home, they found 15 fur coats, racks of designer clothes, unopened bottles of champagne and a receipt for a £3,400 cruise. She had spent £233,000 on 180 items of jewellery, including an £18,000 diamond brooch, from the channel Rocks and Co. Some of the packets of jewellery were addressed to “Lady Glanister”.

Glanister worked for Oakfield Ltd, which runs two homes in Northants. When she left the company in 2010 her successor discovered “serious and alarming anomalies” in the accounts.

Glanister, of Great Billing, Northants, was jailed for 32 months after admitting theft, fraud and false accounting. Toby Long, defending, said she began stealing because she felt “undervalued”. But Judge Michael Fowler told her: “You were aware of precisely what you were doing and precisely what consequences there would be.”

Joan Bohl, whose disabled daughter Alexa had money stolen, said of Glanister: “She’s ghastly and what she has done defies description.”