Wrexham,North Wales - Elderly lady was targeted in Wrexham by gang of bank card thieves

Published date: 19 April 2016 | 

Published by: Staff reporter
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A PENSIONER’S stolen bank card was used twice within minutes to withdraw a total of £1,000 in cash.

A court heard that within hours more than £10,000 worth of property had been bought using the card.

The thief who stole the card after distracting the 80-year-old victim before proceeding to empty her bank account was told by a crown court judge yesterday his actions had been “simply despicable.”

Mold Crown Court heard how the card had been stolen from the victim as she unloaded her shopping at a supermarket car park in Wrexham.

A man asked her for directions to the local hospital and while she was districated her card was stolen.

The card was then used on a spending spree by defendant Aurica Matache, said to be part of a gang travelling the country committing such offences.

Matache, 57, of Wolverhampton, who followed proceedings with the aid of a Romanian interpreter, was jailed for two years and eight months after he admitted stealing the card and £1,000 in cash in two transactions shortly after it had been taken on January 4.

He also admitted fraud by using the card in Wrexham and Cheshire on the same day.

The defendant asked for eight similar offences in Reading, and in Cheshire, in November and December, to be taken into consideration.

Emmalyne Downing, prosecuting, told how the victim had always been confident but was now nervous when using her card; she would look around, and was suspicious of everybody.

She felt that she was targeted because she was elderly and vulnerable and was now nervous when she was on her own.

Ms Downing said the victim had lost £11,600 and there was no information in the case papers whether the bank had repaid the money.

Judge Rhys Rowlands said the victim had not done anything wrong and had been taken advantage of by the defendant who was part of a gang travelling around the country.

He said he would have thought common sense, decency and morality meant no bank would expect the elderly lady to stand the loss.

Sentencing Matache, the judge told him that the victim, a vulnerably lady of 80, had the misfortune to come across him in The Lidl Supermarket car park in Wrexham, shortly before 11am.

He distracted her, and then either he or someone with him managed to steal her bank card.

“Plainly she had been watched earlier when she had used the card because you had the PIN which you then used. She was, in my judgement, deliberately targeted as a vulnerable elderly lady with a view to try to get as much money out of her account as possible before the theft was discovered. That is exactly what happened,” he said.

Within 10 minutes £1,000 had been withdrawn from a cash point in Wrexham’s High Street and then the card was used in shops in Wrexham, Chester and Northwich.

“I make it plain that I view such behaviour, as I suspect do all right thinking people, as simply despicable,” he said.

Matache had been persuaded to join a group of like minded individuals.

“It is plain that there was a group of you travelling around the country carrying out this sort of offending,” he said.

The defendant, he said, had a conviction for robbery in Romania as a much younger man and in November last year he was fined for trying to steal a wallet from an elderly man outside a Coventry supermarket.

Fortunately security guards intervened on that occasion and the judge said he was “astonished” that he had only been fined.

“A more robust sentence might have prevented you from going on to target other individuals,” the judge declared.

 John Wyn Williams, defending, said the defendant had entered the UK in November last year. He could not find work and had been asked by others to join a group or gang and fell to temptation. He was very sorry and the fact he had asked for other offences to be taken into consideration reflected his genuine remorse.

The court heard that staff at the Game store became suspicious, and kept CCTV recordings of the defendant as he bought expensive items at their stores in Chester, Wrexham and Northwich.

He was arrested in January but gave a no comment police interview.

see-http://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/161056/elderly-lady-was-targeted-in-wrexham-by-gang-of-bank-card-thieves.aspx