Josh Sandiford,at Wolverhampton Crown Courtand
Vanessa Pearce,West Midlands
Jamiel Slaney-SummersThe “ringleader” of a trio of care home bosses who faked an elderly resident’s will has been jailed for five and a half years.
Three people were convicted of fraud after using coloured pens and different styles of handwriting to fake the will to 85-year-old Rita Barnsley’s £175,000 estate.
Jamiel Slaney-Summers, former manager of Amberley Care Home in Dudley, West Midlands, had also been found guilty of stealing £6,000 using Miss Barnsley’s bank card.
Judge John Butterfield, sentencing the 65-year-old at Wolverhampton Crown Court on Friday, said he was sure she was the “driving force behind the creation of” the fake will.
He told Slaney-Summers she was someone for whom “lies appear to drip fluidly from your tongue”.
“You have a relationship with truth and lies that is more self-serving and complicated than ordinary folk find it to be,” he said.
Slaney-Summers of Raven Hays Road, Birmingham, quietly left the courtroom while some people in the public gallery sobbed and hugged one another.
Her co-defendants, Graham and Lyn Walker, who owned the home, will be sentenced at a later date.
Miss Barnsley had moved into the home for respite care after becoming unwell in May 2020.
Dudley Metropolitan Borough CouncilDudley Trading Standards, which investigated and prosecuted the case, said it suspected the fake will was drawn up in the summer of 2021, shortly after Ms Barnsley died.
It was reported by her cousin and only surviving family member, Verna, who alerted the Care Quality Commission about her suspicions in September of that year.
The investigation found Miss Barnsley’s will was a “sham” with mis-matched signatures naming Walker and Slaney-Summers as executors.
The court heard Slaney-Summers also stole around £6,000 by making withdrawals from Miss Barnsley’s bank account by using her card.
Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council