A cruel and manipulative fraudster who fled to Tenerife after fleecing an elderly woman out of nearly £300,000 faces a six-year sentence when she is brought back to face justice.
Pamela Gwinnett, 62, treated frail and vulnerable Joan Green as a ‘cash cow to be miked’ – even stealing her money after she died in November 2022.
Gwinnett, who claimed to be the 89-year-old widower’s friend and carer, isolated her from her family and accused them of mistreating her.
She used the cash to make ‘substantial’ mortgage payments, enjoy slap-up meals and get Botox treatments.
Gwinett denied charges of fraud and theft but was found guilty by a jury at Preston Crown Court.
Sign up for all of the latest stories
Start your day informed with Metro’s News Updates newsletter or get Breaking News alerts the moment it happens.
She discovered Joan was wealthy having worked as an accountant, while her husband had been a senior manager at British Aerospace.
‘Both had worked hard during their working lives, and they had invested carefully and shrewdly for their old age,’ Judge Michael Maher said.
‘But to you, Joan Green was simply a cash cow to be milked until she was dry.
‘And so having inveigled your way into their lives behind the charade that you were a benevolent friend to Joan, you set about playing the long game to isolate and control a vulnerable woman and thereby enrich yourself.
‘The masquerade was so successful that she made you a lasting power of attorney within a relatively short time of knowing you.’
While claiming to care for the pensioner, she was also isolating Joan from her friends and family by lying that her closest relatives were stealing her pension money.
She went so far as to move Joan into a care home near where she lived in Adlington to keep her close when Covid hit in March 2020.
When the country emerged from lockdown a year later, Gwinett took Joan back to her own home in Chorley – but padlocked the gates and changed the landline number to protect her ‘golden goose’.
During the final months of her life – which the court heard had become ‘pock marked with increasing periods of bewilderment and confusion – the court heard Joan also became doubly incontinent.
But instead of looking after her during the two hours each day she supposedly covered for Joan’s professional live-in carers – while billing her for the time – Gwinett ‘bullied’ and ‘frightened’ her.
Judge Michael Maher said: ‘On one occasion, [one of the carers] found to her horror that you had left Joan covered in her own faeces in bed at the end of your two-hour shift.
‘On another occasion, you barked at her to relieve herself in her incontinent pad.’
The court heard the live-in carer was so concerned by Gwynett’s behaviour that she secretly arranged for Joan’s family to come and visit her.
A huge row erupted when Gwinett got home an hour later, and Joan can be heard complaining in a video of the argument that she doesn’t know what’s going on.
She also refers to money troubles despite being a wealthy woman.
By March of the following year, Joan was deemed to have no capacity and Gwinett’s power of attorney was suspended.
But she had already plundered £161,000 by that time and was able to steal another £119,000 by opening a joint account and transferring huge sums of Joan’s money into that.
Judge Maher said Joan’s family ‘are devastated by the fact that Joan in the fog of her deteriorating mental health may well have believed the lies you were pedalling and made her isolation all the more solitary and lonely’.
In a victim personal statement, step-daughter Katherine Farrimond, 65, said Joan believed in her final years that her family ‘hated her’ and ‘didn’t want to see her’ due to Gwinett’s ‘lies’.
In April, Gwinett applied to vary her bail conditions so she could fly to Tenerife, claiming she wanted to scatter her late brother’s ashes.
The request was denied but she still boarded a plane just hours later and has remained there since.
The judge added: ‘I sincerely hope that Ms Gwinett is extradited back to the UK to serve this sentence for these egregious offences.
‘It is an affront to justice and the rule of law for this defendant to be allowed to remain in Tenerife.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.