A trusted neighbour who splashed out on a car and holidays for his family when left in charge of a pensioner’s £240,000 inheritance has been jailed.
David Loveday, 33, was made executor of Anita Border’s estate when she died in August 2015, with instructions to give £110,000 each to the pensioner’s longstanding friends Parminder Gibbs and Emma Cullen, Loveday’s partner.
While Loveday handed Ms Cullen her share, Mrs Gibbs received nothing and had to mount a High Court bid to try to get hold of the £110,000 inheritance.
But Loveday had “frittered away” the money, buying an Audi, paying for holidays, settling his debts and other spending including a Netflix subscription. He was locked up for six months in 2017 after refusing to produce paperwork showing where the money had gone.
At Woolwich crown court yesterday, he was sent back to prison for three years and seven months after admitting a charge of fraud.
“It was an abuse of a position of trust over a prolonged and sustained period of time,” said Judge Brendan Finucane QC. He added that Loveday had “shown absolutely no remorse”.
The court heard Mrs Gibbs was met with a barrage of lies and delaying tactics from Loveday when she initially tried to get her share of the inheritance.
She sought to remove Loveday as executor of the will at the High Court, in proceedings which revealed the inheritance had largely been spent.
Mrs Gibbs’s health has suffered during the four-year battle, and she and her husband remortgaged their home to pay for £60,000 in High Court legal fees.
But prosecutor Sean Clark cast doubt on whether any of the money would ever be recouped by the couple.
Loveday’s sentencing hearing was put off four times as he assured the court that £110,000 was sitting in an ISA under Ms Cullen’s name, but papers to back up the claim failed to materialise.
“The court has given the opportunity for the money to be recovered ... there’s not a shred of evidence any such figure existed in any account anywhere,” said Mr Clark. Loveday, now living in Abbey Wood, pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position.
