Gloria Hunniford, presenter of the BBC1 consumer show Rip Off Britain, was defrauded of £120,000 by an impostor, the Old Bailey has heard.
The broadcaster’s bank account was emptied of the sum days after the impostor arrived at a Santander branch with two people whom the woman claimed were her daughter and grandson.
Aysha Davis, a personal banker who was accused of being part of the plot but was acquitted, said the woman told her she had “a few bob” in the bank and had come to add her teenage grandson as a signatory because she had been ill.
Davis helped them complete the paperwork, including photocopying their driving licences, at the Croydon North End branch in south London.
Police are still hunting for the impostor and the supposed daughter. Alan Dowie, 18, from Oxted, Surrey, who pretended to be Hunniford’s grandson, was given a suspended sentence. Reyon Dillon, also 18, who laundered some of the cash from the scam, is due to be sentenced next month.
The court heard that Santander had reimbursed the £120,000 stolen from Hunniford’s account.
Giving evidence, Davis said she had never met Dowie before he walked into the bank, and had to Google Hunniford – who regularly appears on This Morning and The One Show – to find out who she was.
“The name on the ID card was Mary Winifred Gloria Hunniford, and sorry to be stereotypical but this lady looked like a Mary,” she told jurors. “I had to Google Gloria Hunniford and even if I passed her on the street I wouldn’t recognise her because she’s not from my time.”
Sheilagh Davies, prosecuting, said: “But she’s pretty famous.” Jurors giggled when the defendant replied: “In your opinion.”
Handing Dowie an 18-month term of detention, suspended for two years, the judge Timothy Pontius said he accepted the teenager had been a “dupe” in the scam.
Pontius told him: “You were the supposed grandson of the Gloria Hunniford lookalike – or look-not-very-much-alike.”
He added: “You are not going inside today. I don’t think it would be right to deprive you of a golden opportunity to go to university, get a degree and pursue a productive, honest life in your chosen career.”
A Santander spokesperson said: “Santander takes fraud extremely seriously. As soon as we identified this fraudulent activity we alerted the authorities as well as Ms Hunniford herself. We are very sympathetic to the distress caused to Ms Hunniford for being the victim of a scam and, as is our normal practice in a case like this, we have reimbursed her fully for her financial loss.
“We have also made significant improvements to our processes to ensure this type of fraudulent activity is prevented in future.”
