A CARER who persuaded her vulnerable charge to sell his beloved home so she could strip him of his money has been jailed.

June Sanderson, 65, tried to steal £48,000 from a man with an IQ of 54 and did get £13,000 from him to buy herself a car, York Crown Court heard.

Peter Byrne, opening the prosecution, said: “She wasn’t caring for him, she was caring for herself.”

Judge Andrew Stubbs QC told Sanderson: “No-one knows better than you the limitations of his capabilities.”

Sanderson also knew the victim had been targeted by other thieves in the past and not believed.

“In November 2015 you decided it was your turn.

“You bundled him out of the home where he had lived with his parents and which he never wanted to leave.”

Mr Byrne told the jury Sanderson sent her client with a note written by her to the bank asking for £48,000 of the proceeds of the sale to be transferred into her account, but the bank manager refused to make the transfer.

She then went to a solicitor’s to get a power of attorney over her client’s affairs, but the lawyer, after talking to the client alone, was so suspicious, she called in police.

Sanderson, of Strensall Drive, Scarborough, denied one charge of attempted theft and three of theft.

She was convicted of attempted theft and one charge of theft and acquitted on the other two charges by a jury at the end of a week-long trial.

She was jailed for 27 months and made subject to a restraining order banning her from having any contact with her former client or go to his new home for 10 years.

Giving evidence during the trial, she denied acting dishonestly, and denied sending her client to the bank to transfer money into her own account.

She claimed her client had offered to buy her a car and that the bank manager had suggested to her husband that she needed the power of attorney.

Mitigating after the verdicts, David Gordon said there was no suggestion she had stolen from the client in the first four years she had cared for him and the client had got the £13,000 back.

She had serious health issues that would make prison hard for her.