A FAMILY carer was jailed yesterday after admitting stealing from a sick aunt’s savings account to pay for cars and cruises.
Christine Lodwick (58), Cwmgwili, Carmarthen, west Wales, was accused of siphoning off more than £200,000 (€218,000) to bankroll a luxury lifestyle for herself and her family.
It included three Mediterranean cruises costing almost £26,000 and down-payments of more than £23,000 on a Mercedes C180K and a Range Rover.
Lodwick admitted 10 counts of theft out of an original total of 31 charges earlier this month.
She was jailed at Swansea Crown Court for two years after the prosecution accepted her guilty pleas and discontinued all other charges against her.
Her husband, Thomas Lodwick (63), had three allegations of money-laundering against him withdrawn at the same earlier hearing.
The amount stolen totalled £49,741 over more than a year from February 2006, but the prosecution has started confiscation proceedings against her for an expected higher amount.
Kevin Riorden, prosecuting, said Lodwick had taken power of attorney for her aunt Elizabeth Davies (83) in April 2005 when injury forced her to go into a nursing home.
He said the move gave her access to her widowed aunt’s Lloyds TSB savings account, which was £250,000 in credit. She then registered for internet banking and was able to move large sums from the account into her aunt’s current account, for which she had been issued with a bank card.
“The main plank of the prosecution case is that the defendant abused her trust,” Mr Riorden said.