A son forged the signature of his dementia-suffering mum to sell her home and splashed out on a Rolex, laptop and jewellery with the proceeds.
Andrew Cates, 54, sold his mum's three bedroom house in Ainsdale at a cut price and spent £80,000 of the proceeds over just nine months, including buying himself a Rolex watch and gold jewellery. Liverpool Crown Court heard on Friday (April 1) that he rarely visited his elderly mother and the fees for the care home, where she has now been for seven years, went unpaid.
Recorder Ian Harris, QC said: “This offence was cruel, selfish and calculated. It is the type of offending that runs roughshod over the rights of others.” A reference described Cates as "kind and compassionate", but the judge added: “Those words are sadly incompatible with the way you treated your mother."
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The author of the pre-sentence report said Cates had not come across as “particularly remorseful and showed no victim empathy." Recorder Harris added: “That comes through in the letter you have sent to the court to explain -which I do not accept - the reasons behind your offending.”
Cates had also received a letter from his daughter but Recorder Harris said that was “blighted” by warnings she had given her dad about his actions in text messages. The judge said: “They were warnings to you to stop flaunting the wealth you had dishonestly obtained."
Cates, of Salford Road, Ainsdale, who pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation between November 1, 2018 and April 30, 2019, was jailed for two and a half years. Carmel Wilde, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court that the case involved Cates forging the signature of his mum on a Lasting Power of Attorney (LPA) in order to have the right to sell her home.
Cates' mum had dementia since 2009 and left her house in Berwick Avenue to move into a care home in June 2015. The woman, now aged 75, was officially deemed to lack capacity in relation to decision making in September 2018.
The offence came to light after Sefton Borough Council approached a trust company to be appointed as a ‘professional deputy’ after her care had resulted in an £85,000 debt and there had been no contact with family members. The application was made in December 2018 and a representative from the trust company visited the care home and learnt that the pensioner had two sons, one they had never heard from, and the defendant.
Miss Wilde said: “It was confirmed that it was years since the complainant had had any visitors and the last contact with the defendant was by telephone in September 2015 when he gave permission for his mum to have a flu jab. Notice about the application was served on the defendant on January 7, 2019 in which he was told he could object to the Court of Protection which he did later that month.
The trust representative expected that the property was still in the pensioner’s name and were “concerned to find that the property had been sold by the defendant as his mum’s Power of Attorney.” Inquiries revealed he had registered LPA on January 14 - just one week after learning about the trust’s application to be the ‘professional deputy.’
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The LPA had purportedly been signed by his mum on November 10 the previous year though there was no evidence of Cates visiting the home that day, Miss Wilde said. Suspicions that the LPA had been obtained fraudulently were confirmed on finding out that she had had a dementia diagnosis since 2009.
Miss Wilde said that it was estimated that the property would have a price tag of £149,000 and two months later, after some renovations, it was re-sold by the developer for £146,000.
Two texts sent from Cates' daughter in July that year warning him about his Facebook messages were found when his mobile phone was examined after a police raid. One read: "dad, are you not going to get caught especially if you are on Facebook?" and the other apparently saying that his brother was “fuming” about the house.
When interviewed, Cates said he had visited his mum but did not always sign in. He had previously been her carer and maintained she had signed the LPA and knew what she was doing.
He said he thought the council paid for her care home and had spent some of the house proceeds on buying a laptop, a Rolex watch, a gold chain and a ring. The court heard that he had given money away and given loans to friends.
Frank Dillon, defending, said that Cates only has one previous conviction which was for taking a car without consent a decade ago. He said Cates used to look after his mum and they had “a tacit agreement’ that the house would go to him in due course, but it was accepted that was not the same as a legally binding document.
The LPA was signed in 2018 but only registered the following year when it "appeared the house was up for grabs." Mr Dillon added that the defendant’s mum “was mercifully blissfully unaware of the fraud".
