Cancer cash theft ‘nurse’ is locked up
Reporter: by OUR COURT CORRESPONDENT
Date published: 14 October 2009
THE grandmother known to generations of youngsters as Dobbyhorse Vera has hit out after a callous conwoman was jailed for duping her.
Vera Smith (76), who has raised money for good causes for the past 50 years, was swindled by 35-year-old Paula Magee.
Magee bluffed her way into her home by falsely claiming to be a nurse raising money for cancer research before stealing £125 the pensioner had collected for Dr Kershaw’s.
Vera — herself in remission from breast cancer — ran the roundabout on Tommyfield Market for decades and has been honoured on TV by Cilla Black for her charity work and was a former Woman of Oldham.
The tubby burglar later spent the charity money on drugs while Vera, who broke her neck in a fall in 2001, refunded the cash out of her own pocket.
Yesterday Magee, of Hopwood Court, Middleton, was jailed for 32 months after targeting Vera and a string of other pensioners by posing a charity collector in Oldham.
Vera who appeared on Cilla’s “Surprise Surprise” show in the 1980s said after the case: ‘’I’m too frightened to go to sleep at night after what that woman did.
“I would have liked her to have got longer for the misery she has caused. The youngest victim was 65 and she just saw us all as a soft touch.
“She doesn’t have to live in an environment we are living in now — I am frightened to close my eyes in case there’s a noise. I am frightened to go back to sleep. If I hadn’t have had that money what would she have done to me?
“She is a big lady. That woman has been in my house and I have been gullible. People used to have their hands chopped off for doing something liked she did.
“If I was a few years younger I would have liked to have got up and slapped her. She has got no feelings for others. I just don’t know where she gets the nerve from.”
Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, was told Magee targeted the elderly to fund her £70 a day cocaine and heroin habit.
She posed as a Christie charity worker and would ask her victims to sponsor her.
Magee stole £1,161 in total from her victims over a two month period.
The court heard that Magee had received a 12- month sentence for burglary in February this year after she forced her way into her own grandmother’s home to steal money.
She was released just three days later having served half the sentence while on remand.
Two months later she began her crime spree in the Oldham area.
She pleaded guilty to three counts of burglary and three counts of fraud and asked for 32 offences to be considered.
Sentencing, Judge Diana Eaglestone said: “You have preyed on the elderly in our communities. In all these cases Christie didn’t get the money — you got the money and kept it for yourself.
“They are not just mean and nasty offences but they cause serious emotional damage.”
