Dementia carer who defrauded 96 year old man out of £143,000 to fund lavish lifestyle given suspended sentence

April Jo Richardson,  32, of Stansted Close, Chelmsford, has been sentenced today after she was found guilty of fraud by abuse of power and fraud by false representation at Inner London Crown Court. Richardson was sentenced to 20, six and four months, to run concurrently, suspended for 21 months. Richardson will be required to complete 150hrs of unpaid work and 24 days of a rehabilitation programme.

April Richardson had spun an intricate web of lies which included her being a cancer patient and that she desperately needed help. In one case she messaged pretending to be a cancer nurse called “Sonia” where she pleaded with the husband to provide financial aid for the “last remaining months of her life”.

After discovering that an elderly couple’s bank accounts showed significant losses, their children made a report to Action Fraud and the case was then passed on to the City of London Police’s Fraud Operations Team to investigate.

Detective Inspector Nichola Meghji, from the Fraud Operations team, at the City of London Police said:

“The case of April Richardson is shocking and highly reprehensible, especially when you consider the age and vulnerability of the couple and the total amount of money that they lost, through their generosity and kindness.

“Nurses, carers and those working in palliative care are some of the hardest working and most selfless people in the country where a lot of people, in need, rely on them. It’s therefore very sad to see this level of trust abused.

“Richardson is an incredibly manipulative individual who coerced an elderly couple to part with their money purely for her financial and material gain.”

The history of the case can be traced back to 2018 when Richardson was employed by KarePlus, on behalf of Essex County Council, as a carer.  It was in this capacity that, over time, she befriended the husband of a patient in her care.  The patient had suffered a stroke in 2011 and was in advancing stages of dementia, which meant her condition required personal care twice a day.

In July 2022, when it was established that the patient needed to move into a care home on a more permanent basis, her daughter was required to provide Essex County Council with bank statements from the previous three months, to gauge the patient’s financial means in order to fund her residence.  It was at this stage that the couple’s children were shocked to discover that the bank accounts were overdrawn. 

After gaining power of attorney in September 2022, the couple’s children were able to access detailed financial information of their parents’ bank accounts. Between September 2018 and July 2022 there were a total of 202 transactions from the couple’s bank account to April Richardson, with an average payment of one per week at £718.

The patient’s husband stated that he had been helping April Richardson over the years by providing funds for various reasons, including: new beds for her two young sons, a final holiday to Spain for her sons and her terminally ill father, an iPhone and Apple Watch to enable her to seek employment, new flooring, an urgent trip to New York for private medical treatment for cancer and flights to Barbados for her brother’s wedding.

In total, the payments made from to April Richardson exceeded £143,000 over a five-year period.