Trading standards team hailed for rumbling £175k care home fraud

A council chief has hailed the authority’s “superb” trading standards team after its latest high-profile court victory.

Three former bosses of a borough care home are facing jail after a jury ruled they had created a fake will in a bid to get hold of an elderly resident’s £175,000 fortune.

The prosecution, brought by Dudley Council’s trading standards team, is one of the biggest recorded convictions for elder fraud in the country.

Councillor Phil Atkins, cabinet member responsible for trading standards, hit out at the “horrific abuse of trust” and said it showed the authority would not tolerate elder abuse of any kind.

Married couple Graham and Lyn Walker, the former owners of Amberley Care Home in Brierley Hill, stood trial with the home’s former manager, Jamiel Slaney-Summers.

All three were found guilty by a jury at Wolverhampton Crown Court of fraud on Friday, with Slaney-Summers also found guilty of theft.

Prosecutors said the trio “financially abused” 85-year-old Rita Barnsley, who moved into the Stourbridge Road care home after becoming unwell in May 2020.

At the time, Graham Walker, 74 and Lyn Walker, 71, of Ribberford Close, Halesowen, owned the care home. Slaney-Summers, 65, of Raven Hays Road, Birmingham, was the registered manager.

The pensioner’s last will and testament was a “sham” with different handwriting and coloured pens used throughout – and named Lyn Walker and Slaney-Summers as executors. They stood to benefit to the tune of around £175,000 from the plans laid out in the will, prosecutors told the court.

An investigation was launched by the trading standards team after Ms Barnsley’s only surviving relative, her cousin Verna, made a complaint.

The investigation also uncovered that Slaney-Summers stole around £6,000 by making withdrawals from Ms Barnsley’s bank account using her card.

Councillor Atkins said: “I welcome the decision of the jury, which brings to an end a long and painstaking investigation by our superb trading standards team to bring these three people to justice.

“Their intentions were clear – to fleece this poor, vulnerable woman of all the money she had worked her whole life to earn. It was an horrific abuse of trust by three people who she was relying on to look after her best interests.

“Instead they financially abused her and would have taken everything she had but for the dogged determination of her cousin and our trading standards team.

“This case is a warning that as a council we will not tolerate elder abuse.”

The trio will be sentenced on December 5.