Care home fraudster jailed for faking £175k will

The "ringleader" of a trio of care home bosses who faked an elderly resident's will has been jailed for five and a half years.

Three people were convicted of fraud after using coloured pens and different styles of handwriting to fake the will to 85-year-old Rita Barnsley's £175,000 estate.

Jamiel Slaney-Summers, former manager of Amberley Care Home in Dudley, West Midlands, had also been found guilty of stealing £6,000 using Miss Barnsley's bank card.

Judge John Butterfield, sentencing the 65-year-old at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Friday, said he was sure she was the "driving force behind the creation of" the fake will.

• Concerns raised over care home fraudster years before faked will

Miss Barnsley had moved into the home for respite care after becoming unwell in May 2020.

Miss Barnsley was "particularly vulnerable, physically frail and very isolated", Judge Butterfield told Slaney-Summers.

He said she had taken "deliberate steps" to stop her speaking to her cousin and only surviving relative, Verna Wooley, on the phone.

It was Ms Wooley who alerted the Care Quality Commission about her suspicions in September of that year.

The fake will was suspected to have been drawn up in the summer of 2021, shortly after Miss Barnsley died, according to Dudley Trading Standards, which investigated and prosecuted the case.

The investigation found Miss Barnsley's will was a "sham" with mis-matched signatures naming Walker and Slaney-Summers as executors.

The court heard Slaney-Summers also stole cash by making withdrawals from Miss Barnsley's bank account by using her card.

Draining £6,000 from Ms Barnsley's bank account was "seemingly not enough" for the defendant, which led to the creation of the fake will, added Judge Butterfield.

He told Slaney-Summers she was someone for whom "lies appear to drip fluidly from your tongue".

"You have a relationship with truth and lies that is more self-serving and complicated than ordinary folk find it to be," he said.

He also praised the Dudley Trading Standards investigation, believed to be one of the largest of its kind in the UK.

In her defence, David Burgess told the court it "spoke volumes" that Slaney-Summers had worked in care for 35 years and had no previous convictions.

He said it remained a "mystery" what motivated her offending, even though she continues to deny the charges.

Slaney-Summers of Raven Hays Road, Birmingham, quietly left the courtroom while some people in the public gallery sobbed and hugged one another.

Her co-defendants, Graham Walker, 74 and Lyn Walker, 71, both of Ribberford Close, Halesowen, who owned the home, will be sentenced at a later date.

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