WHEN elderly couple Kathleen and Desmond Moyle met bus driver John Harris, they thought they’d found a new friend.
But in reality, the childless couple had met a scammer who planned to gain power of attorney over them and defraud them out of £351,481 by forging their wills.
Kathleen and Desmond Moyle were victims of a will scam[/caption]
John Harris, pictured, befriended them before swindling them out of over £350k[/caption]
Their niece Rebecca Creed bravely shared their story on This Morning[/caption]
Kathleen and Desmond lived in a village in Cornwall, far away from their family, when the bus driver swindler befriended them.
Their niece, Rebecca Creed, often heard them discussing their new pal John in a positive way when she spoke to them on the phone or saw them at family gatherings.
“Their family was everything to me and they lived for each other,” she tells.
“In my younger years, we saw them at Christmas and family gatherings.
“We saw them less frequently as we grew up and we all had our families, but we still kept in touch.”
John would often complete errands for the elderly couple and drive them to places.
So, when Kathleen and Desmond created wills in 2015 through a solicitor, they wanted to repay his kindness.
They named John Harris as one of the executors, and left 25% of their estate to him along with other family members.
However, after her uncle Desmond passed away in 2017, Rebecca’s late cousin Alan Tucker noticed discrepancies with the will.
Namely, a whopping 95% of Desmond’s assets had been given to con man John.
“Alan knew that was wrong,” Rebecca reveals on This Morning.
“He reached out through a solicitor to try and challenge that, but sadly he never got anywhere.”
Alan reached out to Rebecca’s parents in regards to the discrepancy so that they were aware.
When Kathleen sadly passed away shortly after in 2018, Rebecca’s parents believed they were to receive some money.
How to protect yourself from scams
BY keeping these tips in mind, you can avoid getting caught up in a scam:
- Firstly, remember that if something seems too good to be true, it normally is.
- Check brands are “verified” on Facebook and Twitter pages – this means the company will have a blue tick on its profile.
- Look for grammatical and spelling errors; fraudsters are notoriously bad at writing proper English. If you receive a message from a “friend” informing you of a freebie, consider whether it’s written in your friend’s normal style.
- If you’re invited to click on a URL, hover over the link to see the address it will take you to – does it look genuine?
- To be on the really safe side, don’t click on unsolicited links in messages, even if they appear to come from a trusted contact.
- Be careful when opening email attachments too. Fraudsters are increasingly attaching files, usually PDFs or spreadsheets, which contain dangerous malware.
- If you receive a suspicious message then report it to the company, block the sender and delete it.
- If you think you’ve fallen for a scam, report it to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or use its online fraud reporting tool.
When they didn’t, they reached out to a solicitor.
The solicitor discovered that the will pack had an earlier date compared to the signature provided by Kathleen.
The family notified the police in late 2018 as they were concerned when they couldn’t reach John to deal with the estate.
Through the police investigation, detectives uncovered that he had personally created altered wills for the victims in 2016, assigning the majority of their estates to himself.
“It has now been proved that was not her signature,” Rebecca says.
“And there were two drug addicts that witnessed this signature.”
Cops also discovered that he had milked Kathleen’s bank account with transfers totalling £265,000 and £30,000 worth of cash after being granted power of attorney while she was alive.
A court heard in July that John paid two homeless men £20 each to sign forged handwritten wills.
He had met them both whilst a bus driver in Falmouth, and had been ferrying them around to sell the Big Issue.
John had imitated new wills with forged signatures to award him the majority of Kathleen and Desmond’s estates.
In September this year, Harris was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for forging the wills.
“It was quite harrowing to listen to,” Rebecca recalls about the court case.
Det Con Isabelle Woodall, the investigating officer, said that Harris “exploited the most vulnerable in society for his own financial gain”.
“The victims in this case had no children and lived remotely, had no way of knowing that the man that they believed to be a devoted friend, was motivated by greed,” she said.
“Having identified their vulnerabilities and earned their trust Harris contrived to syphon off their assets, netting what remained following their deaths, despite safeguarding measures which should have protected them.”
