A home help accused of defrauding a Huddersfield pensioner told a jury yesterday(thurs) she would never have taken any money without his approval.
Theresa Frost said Trevor Walshaw “was like a dad” to her. “We were very close, really good friends.”
She told Leeds Crown Court she had got to know the pensioner when he was 76 in 2009 while working for TLC doing shopping and cleaning for him and others.
But later that year she decided to leave them and when she told Trevor that he was in tears and asked her to continue coming to his home to help him and she did.
She agreed in the witness box that by September that year he had named her as the beneficiary in his will “although I did not find that out straight away.”
Frost said she paid Mr Walshaw’s bills, did shopping for him and as time went on looked after his finances using his bank card.
He told her to spend his money when she wanted, that included for holidays.
Under cross-examination by Mathew Bean prosecuting she denied dishonesty and said she had always asked Mr Walshaw before spending his money.
“He was always saying you might as well have my money because it is going to be yours at the end of the day. He said he didn’t want the Government seeing how much money he had in his accounts.”
“I wouldn’t take an old persons money I am not that sort of person. All I wanted to do was help Trevor.”
She said when it looked as though he was going to have to go into a care home in 2012 he was upset and wanted to live with her and her family.
After a discussion it was decided to sell Mr Walshaw’s house in Huddersfield and their family home and buy another property where they could all live together.
She denied she and her husband Paul had fraudulently tried to transfer £112,000 from the proceeds of Mr Walshaw’s sale and said it was to go towards the purchase of the new property.
Mr Bean suggested prior to her involvement with Mr Walshaw’s finances his savings were increasing, by 2012 bonds had been cashed in and apart from the house proceeds he would have been £3,000 overdrawn.
“He needed a lot of stuff,” she said. “I have done what he asked me to do.”
Mr Bean said: “The reality is Mrs Frost when you found you were going to inherit his money you decided you were going to spend it before he died, not wait.”
She replied: “If I had wanted Trevor’s money I would have left him to die when I found him collapsed at home on the floor, I wouldn’t have taken him to hospital. I cared for him.”
Theresa Frost, 44 of Stanley Road, Lindley, Huddersfield denies 15 charges of fraud. Her husband Paul, 53 denies two charges.
Paul Frost told the jury Mr Walshaw offered to pay off two loans for him totalling £14,317 to help him get the mortgage for the home they were going to share.
The trial continues.
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