Gambling addict preyed on elderly

A Macclesfield man has been jailed for stealing from vulnerable people to fund his gambling addiction.

Terence Joseph Oakes, 51, of Briarwood Avenue, appeared at Chester Crown Court where he was jailed for six years for stealing cash and bank cards.

At a sentencing hearing he was described by the prosecutor, Karl Scholz, as a man for whom ‘dishonesty was a way of life’ and a thief who ‘preyed only on the old and vulnerable’.

Oakes’s victims were aged 96, 81 and 72.

Oakes catalogue of crimes commenced on September 19, last yea, when he knocked on the door of a 96-year-old woman who lives alone in Macclesfield.

Mr Scholz said: “He told the woman that he had been sent by her daughter to check her back door, which the woman believed. He told her the door needed hinges and asked for £20 to buy them.”

After the woman brought her purse he asked for a cup of tea and took the purse containing £500 in cash and bank cards. After he left he used the bank cards to place two £30 bets at a nearby betting shop. A third attempt to use the card was declined.

On September 10 Oakes called at the Macclesfield home of an 81-year-old man, lying that he knew the man from a fishing club.

Mr Scholz said: “During the conversation he distracted the man and was able to steal his wallet, which contained £300, a bank card and a pension card which had the PIN number on. After Oakes left he attended the Post Office in Mill Street, Macclesfield, where he withdrew £130 from the victim’s pension account.”

A third Macclesfield victim was visited by Oakes on September 24. “He told the 72-year-old woman, who was ‘easily confused’, that he was the brother of a neighbour who had recently died.”

The court heard that Oakes convinced her to hand over £45 for a box of wine which he said he would purchase and £30 for some slates for her garden. He also took £5 for a ‘sympathy card’ for his alleged brother.

Oakes managed to convince the woman to hand over her bank card and PIN and over the next two days he withdrew £1,500 in cash from the Co-op on London Road. He had earlier pleaded guilty to two burglaries and five counts of theft and was arrested by police who saw him on CCTV withdrawing the cash.

He also left DNA on a teacup at one of the houses.