To inform Blog post 2 – on the nature of abuse by LPA attorneys – a more systematic search for news stories was conducted in January 2025. This page provides more details of those searches and what information was sought from each story.
The database searched – Nexis(R)
The Nexis database is a searchable electronic database of news stories from around the world, hosted by the LexisNexis company.
It was searched on 1st February 2025, with publication date limits between 1 January 2022 to 1 February 2025 (so, a period of just over three years)
Search terms used
The following simple combination of search terms was used:
(Abuse or Fraud or Stole) and (“Power of Attorney” OR “Lasting Power“)
Screening and selection process
The search hits (over 7,000) were ordered by relevance, and screened by one person up to record 150. For inclusion in the review, the story had to be:
- About abuse by an LPA attorney(s), of the person or people whose best interests they should be supporting
- Have occurred in one of the four UK nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland)
Therefore, news stories of abuse by people with ordinary Power of Attorney, to make decisions for others where this was not related to potential or actial lack of mental capacity (i.e. LPAs or EPAs), were excluded.
Search and screening results
Database records for likely inclusion were marked and extracted as a pdf. This document was then screened leading to a set of 24 relevant stories about LPA attorneys abusing their donor, plus 2 further stories where legal professional LPA attorneys had allegedly abused a large number of their LPA clients.
Data extraction
Data was extracted from from each story into an MS-Word table. The columns in the table were for the following information, where the news articles provided this. Sometimes two or more articles about the same abuse story or court case provided different details about the same victim’s story:
- News source, publication date, & Victim name(s)
- Story source/witness name (if known) – often just ‘Court case’
- Relationship of perpetrator(s) to victim (donor), whether sole LPA, perpetrator’s name (if published)
- Relationship of source/witness to victim (donor)
- Victim’s sex, age and other vulnerability factors mentioned
- Types of abuse mentioned – and alleged amount for financial abuse
- Whether also involving fraudulent wills and/or predatory marriage
- Alleged organisational failings or missed opportunities to identify or prevent the abuse
- How the abuse came to light
- Resolution? Court conviction/sentence?
The full table is available on request. The list of news articles is below.
| 19 February 2022 Daily Record | Niece stole £71k meant for aunt’s dementia care; Bankrupt relative abused role as power of attorney by Alan McEwen |
| 7 March 2022 Leicester Mercury | Solicitor stole £7,000 from resident in a nursing home; used power of attorney to withdraw cash on 39 Occasions by Corey Bedford |
| 14 March 2022 Chester Chronicle | Cheshire family stole £145,000 from vulnerable relative ‘to fund lavish lifestyles’ by Alex McIntyre |
| 24 May 2022 Oxford Mail | Man defrauded his own elderly mother by Tom Seaward |
| 4 October 2022 Northern Echo | Woman avoids prison after stealing thousands from her vulnerable grandfather by Aja Dodd |
| 24 November 2022 National World | Meg Wynn Owen: who is Love Actually actress, how much was stolen by friend, and Brian Malam prison sentence by Heather Carrick |
| 28 February 2023 Daily Record | Fraud stole £48k from her own mum Daughter abused power of attorney to pinch life savings of frail Mary, 90 by Emilie Howie |
| 28 January 2023 BBC News, 27 January 2024 Daily Mail | ‘My elderly father found a new partner – then vanished from my life’ (BBC News) by Sue Mitchell & Ben Milne My dad was stolen from me (Daily Mail) by Jenny Johnston |
| 9 November 2023 Governance, Risk & Compliance Monitor Worldwide | Liverpool man who stole £117k from parents jailed (Global Data Point) |
| 14 November 2023 Manchester Evening News | Callous son stole £250k from mum with dementia by Amy Walker |
| 24 January 2024 Daily Record | Son who stole dying dad’s life savings after abusing power of attorney dodges jail by Gordon Currie |
| 25 January 2024 BBC Wiltshire | Calne man guilty of misusing his power of attorney by Bea Swallows |
| 2 February 2024 Salisbury Journal | Solicitor jailed for stealing 85k from elderly client and own father by Joshua Truksa |
| 7 March 2024 YorkshireLive (examiner.co.uk) | Yorkshire woman jailed after stealing more than £75,000 from mum with dementia by John Davies & Sebastian McCormick |
| 14 March 2024 MailOnline | Pensioner ‘evicted her 94-year-old stepfather from his £475k home and stole hundreds of thousands of pounds from him by abusing her power of attorney – before spending his money on Amazon Prime and holidays’ by Stewart Carr |
| 29 March 2024 Eastern Daily Press | Ex-soldier stole thousands from dying father by Pete Walsh |
| 18 July 2024 Falmouth Packet | First pictures of bus driver accused of fraud and forging elderly couple’s wills by Paul Armstrong |
| 4 August 2024 Ipswich Star | Ipswich woman who took 30k from frail neighbour was ‘like a child in a sweetshop’ by Abygail Fossett |
| 17 September 2024 Doncaster Free Press | Doncaster carer stole £125,000 from elderly man to fund gambling addiction |
| 7 November 2024 MainOnline | Carer who stole ‘staggering’ £145,000 from woman in her 90s and had dementia-battling victim’s will changed to inherit her house is spared jail by Richard Marsden |
| 28 November 2024 Manchester Evening News | Financial adviser gained ‘vulnerable’ elderly woman’s trust, then conned her out of brother’s £40k inheritance by Andrew Bardsley |
| 24 December 2024 i paper | When people you trust steal your savings: Victims of lasting power of attorney abuse call for increased safeguards by Alannah Francis |
| 17 January 2025 Lynn News Tuesday | Woman faces years in jail after stealing nearly £10,000 from bed-bound pensioner by Kris Johnston |
AbuseByLPAs.net 