COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

A drug addict whose habit was costing hundreds of pounds a day preyed on a disabled man who had taken sympathy on him after seeing him begging in a Coventry subway.

Stephen Long, with the help of his heroin-addicted girlfriend Kate Mooney, succeeded in getting a total of almost £54,000 out of his trusting victim.

Over the course of 11 months they defrauded him out of more than £36,000 between them, and Long also stole a further £17,000 using the man’s bank card, Warwick Crown Court has heard.

Long, 34, of no fixed address, was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to charges of fraud and theft.

Mooney, 31, of Harnall Lane East, Coventry, who pleaded guilty to the fraud on a basis which was rejected by Judge Syliva de Bertodano, was jailed for two years and four months.

Prosecutor Priya Bakshi said the offences came to light after there was an unrelated burglary at the victim’s home in Allesley while he was in hospital in October last year.

When the police and his ex-wife went to his home to check on it, they found a large number of letters which had been written by Long and Mooney, conning him out of money.

The man, who is in his 60s and walks with the aid of a stick, had befriended Long and given him money after seeing him with his dog begging in a Coventry subway in 2014.

Shortly after the man had moved to an address in Allesley, Long, who he did not realise knew where he lived, turned up, and he gave him some food and his mobile phone number.

Long continued to visit him a few times a week, and then claimed he needed money to pay a fee to receive a payment from a transfer company called Simple Payments.

The man agreed to lend him some, and from then on, Long asked for more every time he visited.

He then began receiving texts, supposedly from Simple Payments, claiming that Long was owed £81,000 but that they first needed an admin release fee to be paid.

From then on, each time he visited Long would ‘borrow’ amount of up to £500 which the victim would withdraw in cash from his bank for him, on the understanding that it would be repaid.

The requests for money were then backed up by letters, supposedly from someone called Emma Wilson-Gray at Simple Payments, but in fact written by Mooney, setting out reasons why Long needed to make a variety of payments.

As a result of the fraud the victim was tricked into withdrawing and handing to Long a total of £36,875.

But during the 11 months of the scam, he was also issued with a bank card which Long repeatedly took from his home and, knowing the pin number, he and Mooney used it to withdraw a total of £17,000.

Jailing them both, Judge de Bertodano told them: “This is a really despicable set of offences.

“Long, you took advantage of a man who had no reason to have anything to do with you, but treated you with nothing but kindness, and you abused that to take his money.

“You took advantage of his trusting nature, regardless of the effect it would have on him. To you, he was just a source of money. There is no chance of him ever seeing a penny of it again.

“Mooney, I accept this was not your idea, and you were not the main mover, but you wrote those letters – and that is a choice you made.”