THE man who caught a Prestatyn woman defrauding a “particularly vulnerable” lady in her mid-90s said he does not feel the suspended sentence she received this week was adequate punishment.

Geraint Ward was working as a Halifax banking consultant at its Rhyl branch when he met Gwen Williams and her carer, Evelyn Jones, on November 16, 2017.

Jones, 67, of Victoria Road West, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, suspended for the same time period, at Mold Crown Court on November 4, having withdrawn more than £145,000 from the bank accounts of Ms Williams, who died in January 2018 aged 96.

Mr Ward, who now lives in West Wales, said he alerted Halifax’s fraud department, and subsequently police, after noticing suspicious activity on Ms Williams’ account.

He had asked Ms Williams if she knew the PIN code to her own accounts, to which she answered: “no”, before noticing “a lot of transactions” on her account.

Jones told Mr Ward she would like £20,000 moved from one of Ms Williams’ accounts to the other, while he also noticed roughly £300 had been taken out of Ms Williams’ account from cashpoints in Rhyl or Prestatyn every day since August 2017.

Mr Ward, who still works for Halifax, said: “The sentence feels like such a shame.

“For the impact it had, and the loss of trust shown by her doing that to someone so vulnerable… I didn’t feel it was just punishment.

“I knew there was something wrong. Nobody takes out £300 a day for that many days. It worked out at about £20,000 having been taken out.

“I feel glad that I caught her… it feels like the biggest impact I’ve ever made on anyone’s life.”

Mr Ward attended court to give evidence at Jones’ trial, only for her change her plea to guilty to a charge of fraud by abuse of position.

Following this, Mr Ward said Ms Williams’ brother met him in court and shook his hand, saying he was “so grateful” to him for noticing Jones’ withdrawals.

It was only when Mr Ward was at court that day that he learnt Ms Williams had sadly died, and said their initial meeting in November 2017 was really a “chance encounter”.

He said: “I wouldn’t normally do that kind of transaction. I would do interviews for credit cards, loans, grievance principles… I just saw them to help a queue in the banking hall.

“If she had just gone to the counter, she may have never got caught.

“Evelyn came in and said she was going to pay £1,000 from Ms Williams’ account to hers, as her wages, which already was suspicious.

“You do sometimes get carers coming into branches who are operating accounts for those who they care for, but maybe not as vulnerable as the victim was in this case.

“She (Ms Williams) wasn’t really present, even as we were talking.

“Carers putting a person’s card and PIN in for them (as Jones did for Ms Williams) is not completely unusual, but it’s enough to make you pay attention to the transaction.”

Mr Ward said he took a photocopy of Jones’ passport while awaiting police, who soon arrived at his office.

When Jones was searched, two bank cards of Ms Williams’, and a photocopy of her bank statement, were found on her person.

At Jones’ home, a letter regarding debts she owed, Ms Williams’ will, a blank power of attorney form, and cash in coins and notes were all found.

Prosecutor Matthew Kerruish-Jones said £131,674.14 was withdrawn from Ms Williams’ Nationwide account, and £15,400 from her Halifax account, making a total of £147,074.14.

Jones had also overseen Ms Williams changing her will to bequeath her house to her in 2016.

Mr Ward added: “If she had kept doing the £300-a-day withdrawals, she probably could have cleared the bank account.

“I think she must have got greedy; that’s what tripped her up.”

Judge Niclas Parry also ordered Jones to complete 300 hours’ unpaid work for stealing what he called a “staggering” amount of money from Ms Williams.