Women jailed over £634k will fraud

Laurna Porter and Julie Atkins took money from the estates of the deceased over a 13 year period

A probate manager and her friend have been jailed for defrauding and laundering more than £634,000 from the estates of dead people.

Laurna Porter, 68, from Tamworth, admitted to fraud by abuse of position and money laundering in 2022, while Julie Atkins, 68, also of Tamworth, a medical secretary and grandmother of 10, was found guilty of money laundering in February.

Porter diverted funds from 23 wills over 13 years while working for two law firms in Tamworth, with money paid into bank accounts belonging to Atkins, before some was shared back to Porter.

Porter was sentenced to four years in prison at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Thursday, while Atkins was sentenced to 30 months.

Judge John Edwards said: "Not only was this cynical and callous, it was unkind and ruthless exploitation.

"These people placed their trust in you at the most vulnerable time of their lives."

Some of the money stolen was meant to go charity and other good causes, and Porter deliberately targeted victims without close family where she thought the fraud was likely to go unnoticed, said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

The payments were often disguised as a debt or a gift, and the fraud came to light when Porter moved firms and a discrepancy was discovered in one of the wills, as £5,000 had been paid to Atkins.

The pair were arrested in April 2018.

Breach of trust

Det Sgt Andrew Shorthouse from Staffordshire Police said: "The fraud was targeted and systematic over a long period of time and could not have been successful without the repeated dishonest actions of both.

"Porter held a position where trust had to be placed in her by those whose estates she managed, that trust was breached.”

Porter had worked at Dewes Sketchley solicitors in Tamworth when she began committing fraud.

The firm merged with Fishers Solicitors in May 2016, which stated she had never been employed by them, as she left in December 2015, before the merger.

Fishers director Amanda Payne gave a victim impact statement in court, describing the long hours she spent inspecting Porter's files after the fraud was discovered, and how she was horrified by what she found.

"Mrs Porter and Mrs Atkins abused the trust of elderly and vulnerable people in the town where they both worked and lived in order to feed their own greed," Ms Payne said outside court.

Porter also worked in the probate department of Glaisyers Solicitors in Tamworth, which said she had been employed for just over a year before the issues on a "very small number of files" was discovered in 2018.

This company has no links to any similarly named firms, including Manchester-headquartered Glaisyers Solicitors LLP, which trades as Glaisyers ETL.

She was dismissed, and her activities reported to the police and Solicitors Regulatory Authority, it said in a statement.

The firm said clients who were affected by Porter's criminal activities had been fully reimbursed, but it was "appalled" that she breached her obligations of trust to them, her other former employers, and vulnerable clients who had placed faith in her for legal advice.

Anamarie Coomansingh from the CPS described the pair's actions as a "calculated fraud," and "particularly distressing" for those who wanted to see their loved one's last wishes properly executed.

“The CPS will now seek to recover any available criminal proceeds from the defendants, in order to compensate the beneficiaries,” she said.