A care worker who stole thousands of pounds from an elderly couple has been jailed for two years.

Patricia Knight, 41, siphoned off up to £300 a day from the couple's bank account, and when that was getting low, transferred a substantial sum from another account.

Knight, of Granville Road, Colchester, denied stealing £37,200 from the Halifax bank and obtaining a £113,678 money transfer by deception but was convicted after a trial earlier this year.

Kevin Clarke, mitigating, said Knight has a 19-year-old daughter who has a child, and she was concerned her daughter needed help looking after the child. Knight is training as a listener for Samaritans.

Judge Alasdair Darroch, sitting at Chelmsford Crown Court, yesterday jailed Knight for two years for each offence, to run concurrently.

He also ordered that £1,170 in cash found on her be forfeited under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

He said: "It will go a small way to repaying the £37,000 which you plundered from a couple you were meant to be looking after.

"It was the grossest possible breach of trust and it went on for some time.

"I cannot even give you credit for admitting because you denied it, despite strong evidence against you."

The trial heard that Knight was supposed to look after Raymond and Doris Snape, but instead managed to get hold of the couples bank card and began withdrawing money from cash points all around Colchester. She even used it while on holiday in Ireland.

The couple's current account was at about £4,000 before Knight started working for them in August 2001.

By the following month, the first of the £300 withdrawals was made and these continued on almost a daily basis until October, 2002.

When the current account ran low, Knight got money from the deposit account transferred so she could continue with the crime.

Published Tuesday November 18, 2003

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