Pamela Gwinnett made herself power of attorney over an elderly woman, stole £300,000 from her bank account and cut her off from her family. She fled the UK before being sentenced in abstentia to six years. Recently seen emerging from the apartment of an elderly neighbour living alone.
How often has she done this before without being caught? How many others will she target? Judging from how she reacts when confronted by the Sky News journalist in Tenerife (video below from around 7 mins, 20 secs; she’s also shown earlier in the video, in clips recorded in the elderly woman’s home), she’s a forceful personality. It’s easy to see how she could overwhelm an elderly person and bend them to her will.
I absolutely hate people who do this. You should be locked up for good with the key thrown away if you swindle old or vulnerable people. I had a very elderly widowed aunt who had no children, but 2 cousins who are twins were supposed to be “looking after” her as well as trained carers.
Well the cousins did that all right, they got POA over her affairs and by the time she went into care all of her money had gone, they even robbed the furniture out of her one bed flat before handing the keys back to the council. It was a really horrible thing to do, My middle name is after this aunt as she sadly lost 5 children and her husband died of stomach cancer. After that she went through a very bad menopause and ended up manic depressive, my mum really looked out for her because of her illness. When she was well she was eccentric and great fun and I really miss her.
Later on a sister of the twins had her eyes on another elderly aunt after she was widowed, she was a bookeeper and said she’d help with things like pension forms and bank accounts. Thankfully this aunt was my mum’s youngest sister and like a second mum to us so we looked out for her (her 2 adult children couldn’t be bothered), she was also very savvy and could see what the motive was. That particular cousin had 2 sons who were swindlers, one was a detective in the police and they robbed another aunt. It was a branch of my mother’s family we didn’t associate with aside of wedding and funerals.
How awful that happened to your aunt, especially after such tragedy in her life. Good on you for looking out for your other aunt. Terrible that there should be even one person in a family doing or trying to do this, let alone more. It’s unbelievable that one of the swindlers you mention was a police detective. I suppose he got away with it, did he?
One of the holiday houses in our neighbourhood is owned by a judge who stole it from the elderly parents of another (still living here) neighbour. He also stole €800K from an elderly client in another town. Nothing ever happened to him.
Oh, no…this was in the '80s; he is gaga now and in his 80s and still enjoying the little cottage he stole. (It was the wash house of the large landhaus on the same property.)
The business with the 2 sons who were swindlers, one in the police, was their mother’s sister moved in with her and she paid to buy the council house they were in and renovate it. Unfortunately being immediate family she didn’t think to get anything drawn up by a solicitor. When their mother died, they went round the day after the funeral to tell the aunt they were evicting her. After she left they sold the house and pocketed the cash from it, quite a lot as it was bought from the council for 8.5k and sold on for about 80k.
We were at the funeral and the drinks reception afterwards and there was something very shifty going on with the 2 sons, they were saying things like “Aunty M has no idea what’s coming to her tomorrow”.
They were an absolute pair of shysters and both of them wealthy so they didn’t need the money.