How Brierley Hill care home bosses almost succeeded in swindling vulnerable pensioner by isolating her and convincing her to sign away fortune
Rita Barnsley was fiercely independent and did not want to end her days in a nursing home.
She loved her Brierley Hill home but after a fall the 85-year-old was admitted to Amberley Care Home in May 2020.
Rita saw it as temporary stopgap until she could move back home, which she never did. How could she know the smiling bosses of her new care home had no intention of letting her return to her creature comforts but also planned on becoming the major benefactors of her entire estate?
Firstly, they set about isolating Rita from friends and family. When her cousin Verna phoned, as she had regularly for seven decades, staff at the home would come up with various excuses why she could not be connected.
Rita was now reliant on staff at the home, especially manager Jamiel Slaney-Summers who she would entrust with her cashpoint cards and pin numbers. Rita had been diligent with her finances all her life only for Slaney-Summers to plunder her savings to fund her online bingo betting habit.
Slaney-Summers and the owners of the home during the fraud, Lyn and Graham Walker, almost got away with getting the lion's share of Rita's £195,000 estate. However, glaring errors in the fraudulent will document and changes to Rita's planned funeral arrangements alerted an elderly relative.
On Friday (October 24) former manager Slaney-Summers and the Walkers, the home's owners at the time of Rita's death in August 2021, were found guilty of abusing their position to defraud Rita.
Slaney-Summers was also found guilty of theft concerning the £6,000 cashpoint withdrawals.
The jury at Wolverhampton Crown Court took less than two hours to find the trio guilty of all charges.
