A ‘MANIPULATIVE’ conwoman has been jailed for cajoling a retired teacher into re-mortgaging her home in a £77,000 investment scam.

Carole Penfold told victim Carole Wood that she could turn the money into £500,000 within ten years and frogmarched her to the bank to take it out in cash.

She persuaded Ms Wood to take out equity release on her £200,000 home in Ashburton within four days of being introduced to her by mutual friend Antoinette Ede in April 2018.

Ms Wood and Ede were both keen horsewomen and the plot started after she told her friend she was worried about debts. Ede told her that Penfold, who is her aunt, could help her.

Penfold and Ede sat in at meetings with an equity released adviser and a solicitor, during which one of them pretended to be Ms Wood’s sister

Ms Wood received £77,933 from the equity release and within three days Penfold got her to withdraw and hand over £48,000, including £15,000 transferred to Penfold’s partner Jeff Wilkes.

She schooled Ms Wood in how to explain the withdrawals to the bank but cashiers became suspicious and alerted the police.

They contacted Ms Wood’s daughter who confronted Penfold and found her with £29,750 of the cash at her home in Kingsteignton.

Some of the rest had been spent on buying a Mitsubishi truck for £10,400, although police later discovered it was a rebuilt cut-and-shut insurance write-off worth less than £7,000.

The £15,000 was recovered by the bank from Wilkes’s account and another £5,000 was repaid by Ede, who had been paid it as her share of the fraud.

In a victim impact statement, Ms Wood said Penfold and Ede were ‘nasty and calculating people who have cause me anxiety and have left me feeling very small and very stupid for being so gullible.

‘They literally took me to the cleaners.’

Penfold, aged 62, of Meadowcroft Drive, Kingsteignton, Ede, aged 54, of Manor Rd, Newton Abbot, and Wilkes, aged 58, of Exeter Road, Kingsteignton, all denied but were convicted of conspiracy to defraud.

Penfold was jailed for two years and two months, Ede for 18 weeks, suspended for 18 months with 25 days of rehabilitation activities and £450 costs and Wilkes was ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid community work with £450 costs by Judge David Evans at Exeter Crown Court.

He told Penfold: ‘You realised Ms Wood, through a combination of her social situation and personal characteristics, could easily be manipulated and exploited in such a way as you could take money from her. You completely conned her. This must be an immediate sentence given the brazen and exploitative nature of this fraud.’

The trio were all found guilty after a trial in July at which Ms Wood told Ede introduced her to Penfold, who suggested releasing equity on her house in Emmetts Park, Ashburton.

All three denied any dishonest intent. Penfold said she was trying to help her niece’s friend and had never offered high yield investments.

Ede said she knew nothing of the fraud and told the jury ‘I’m a bit thick. I don’t understand long wards like investment.’

Wilkes chose not to give evidence but claimed he believed the transfer was a genuine deposit for building work which he returned voluntarily.