In 2017 Jayne Dodd walked out of Bristol Crown Court after defrauding her elderly step-father of £63,000. As she left to start a suspended jail term she told the Bristol Post: "I’m glad it’s all over.”
What the sentencing judge didn't know then was, for the previous 13 years, she had stolen more than £500,000 from her brother. And when she returned to the same court on Friday (May 27, 2022), this time she didn't walk out.
Dodd, 61, of Wynter Close in Weston-super-Mare, pleaded guilty to theft from Stephen Cox between December 2004 and February 2017. The recorder Mr Andrew Langdon QC jailed her for three years and 10 months.
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The recorder told her: "He gave you access to his bank account. You started to steal from him and in the process you ruined his business and his reputation and caused extreme upset and emotional harm to those who had trusted you."
The court heard Dodd's brother Stephen ran a garage business in Congresbury for some 37 years before becoming self-employed in 1985.
Mr Langdon said: "He ran the garage from rented premises. It was profitable until you offered to help him with the bookkeeping."
Having been given access to her brother's bank account, Dodd made some 1,700 money transfers from his bank account to her's. She would disguise payments to look like genuine business outgoings.
The court heard she took £521,000 but paid £52,000 back. She told people her brother was in financial trouble because he was ill, and falsely blamed a bank for errors.
Mr Langdon said as Dodd creamed off the cash she had no income of her own. Instead she received state benefits.
He told Dodd: "You also deceived your niece into paying £10,000 into your brother's account. She had intended to use this for a deposit on a house.
"Your brother had to pay interest on an overdraft you caused. Approaching retirement he discovered he had little to show for years of hard work."
'I will never forget what she has done'
Mr Cox made an impact statement in which he said he still had debts to worry about thanks to Dodd's actions. He wrote: "I will never forget what she has done, she used my money to benefit from a lifestyle she couldn't afford herself."
Sophie Cox, Dodd's niece, said: "It was upsetting to be lied to. We don't understand why she would do this to us."
In 2017 Dodd was handed a two year jail term, suspended for two years, after she pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position.
The court heard Dodd's elderly father-law Ronald, now deceased, tried to hand down his savings to his 12 children. But after his daughter-in-law Dodd received £63,000 she paid off her debts and household bills and her estranged husband reported her to police.
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