Private Prosecution for Serious Fraud Against Vulnerable Person

[sam1234]

Hi all,*

Apologies for the long post! My Grandma is a 75 year old lady with serious health issues, she had major bowel failure around 3 years ago and had to have most of it removed, she is fed through a line in her leg and has a stoma bag. Along with this when she came out of hospital her memory seemed to of taken a complete nosedive to the point now where it is obvious that she has dementia but which has not been diagnosed.*

A couple of years ago she took me and my auntie to the bank with her as she wanted to stop her statements, the bank signed her up to online banking and my auntie wrote down the passwords for her and put them in my Grandmas bag. My grandma has no access to the internet and doesn't know about online banking, she just wanted to stop her statements.*

Nothing else was said about it until my auntie rang me up quizzing me about £10 worth of diesel that my grandma had put in my car whilst I had taken her out. Immediately alarm bells rang as I realised that she must of been on the online banking. I took my grandma to the bank (my grandma had no clue why we were there or even what was happening) the bank gave me 162 pages of transactions where my auntie had been transferring herself money via the HSBC app that she had set up on her phone. The amounts varied from £20 to £3,000 per transaction and were multiple times per day.*

In total the amount taken is just over £40,000 and is my Grandmas entire life savings. My auntie has admitted that she took the money to pay off debts and as money that my grandma said she could have, due to my grandmas memory my auntie is trying to exploit this to get her off the hook.*

After I went in to the bank I took my grandma into a cafe opposite and filmed her, I asked if she knew she had online banking which she didn't, I showed her the bank statements and her reply was "What the hell has she been doing", it is clear that none of the transactions were authorised

The police became involved and were less than useless, my grandma was clearly been intimidated in to not speaking to the police. My auntie told her that if she spoke to the police then she would slit her wrists or kill herself. After much chasing the police came out to see her and basically convinced her not to make a statement as she is too confused and would have to attend court as a witness which clearly due to her health she cant. The police closed the case and said there is nothing else they can do.*

We are now left with the only option of a private prosecution for Section 4 Fraud, I am a fairly successful business owner and feel confident enough presenting the information to the court and researching as much as possible, but I am unsure of the admissibility of some evidence etc and do not want her to get off with it on a loophole that could be avoided. Are there any people on this forum who can help look over the paperwork, see what else we need and help with court procedures once needed?*

[luxardo]

Before considering a private prosecution, which will be costly have you considered using the fraud actionline ?
http://www.actionfraud.org.uk/report_fraud/

Also what do you want out of a PP ? Revenge ? Your aunt punished/jailed ? Compensation ?
You need to calmly assess what you actually want.

Does she have any assets ? A house ? You could obtain judgement against her and then have her declared bankrupt. You could even just issue a statutory demand for the 40 grand and apply to have her bankrupt without judgement.
*

[sam1234]

Thanks for the reply, we want her punished and for true justice to be served. Know that the money isnt coming back realistically and she will get minimum compensation.*

She has absolutely no assets, works on a zero hours contract in a call centre and lives in a little council flat

[Amethyst]

Have you discussed with your gran a lasting power of attorney or anything ? If her health is deteriorating, particularly mental health, it might be wise to set that up while she is able to. Additionally have the bank restricted the online banking facility now and been made aware the transactions were not undertaken by your gran ?

It is up to your gran if she wants to push any action against your aunt- Bankrupting her isn't going to resolve anything or recoup any money - it would simply cause a huge amount of stress for everyone involved and it sounds as though your aunt may be vulnerable herself ( making a fuss about the £10 was quite obviously going to bring attention on to what she's been doing and her personal financial position doesn't sound very positive - there may be other things in play that you aren't aware of - threat of eviction, gambling etc, it doesn't sound from what you have said that she's been splashing out on shoes & holidays type stuff with the money she's taken ). Your aunt losing her home and her job isn't going to help anyone - and your gran may well just end up taking her in to goodness knows what end.

Make sure access to your grans accounts is removed from your aunt, that the bank are aware your gran cant use internet banking and ensure your gran has protection going forward.

[luxardo]

From what you have said it appears there is ample evidence for a prosecution.
I'd make an official complaint to the police first and try and force them to rethink their decision to prosecute. Go on the IOPC website.
Try writing to your MP as well (not much confidence in that but all it costs is a stamp).
I assume this all happened more than 6 months ago so any charge would have be an indictable one (crown court) as there is a limit of 6 months for summary (magistrates court) charges to be laid.