A former community councillor who embezzled nearly £130,000 from a frail elderly aunt she had invited into her Perthshire home has finally been hit with a court order under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Alice Duncan, 74, once a respected member of Strathyre Community Council, was given two months to pay nearly £52,000 under the Act, confiscated as ill-gotten gains.
The order brings to an end a saga that began more than four years ago when Duncan first appeared in open court, initially charged with embezzling in excess of £241,900.
Then nearly three years ago, after a two-week jury trial, she was found guilty of embezzling £130,000.
More court appearances followed, and more than 18 months ago, Duncan was ordered to pay £109,000 in compensation to the aunt, Jean Rossel, by then 94.
Another £20,000 had by then already been repaid to Ms Rossel.
The compensation order was Duncan’s only sentence.
Proceeds hearing
Proceeds of Crime Act hearings began in May last year, when Falkirk Sheriff Court was told that Duncan had suffered a mental downturn after having to sell her luxury home in Strathyre where her murdered daughter’s ashes are scattered.
Elaine Duncan, 46, was brutally slain in Newmilns, Ayrshire, in April 2014, by her abusive partner James Morely – later jailed for life – who battered her to death with a saucepan.
The Crown initially sought £57,000 as gains ill-gotten by Duncan as a result of her crime.
On Wednesday, depute fiscal Katie Cunningham, for the Crown, asked the court to make a final confiscation order for £51,739.42.
Solicitor Paul Hannah, for Duncan, agreed the amount of money involved.
Sheriff Christopher Shead made the order.
He warned Duncan: “The sum should be paid to the sheriff clerk at Falkirk within two months to the day.”
Sold Strathyre home
The court was told that the sale of Duncan’s home in Keip Road, Strathyre, had raised nearly £246,500.
Mrs Rossel and her husband Frans, who moved 11 years ago from the south of England to Perthshire, had kept a shop in Sussex for 34 years, but after they retired they accepted an offer from Duncan, Mrs Rossel’s brother’s daughter, to live with her and her husband.
The plan was they would sell their bungalow in England and Duncan and her husband would organise the demolition of a tractor shed at their home in Strathyre, and the construction of a sitting-room extension for Mr and Mrs Rossel in its place.
Mr Rossel never made it to the Duncans’ home, because he was deemed too frail and he went straight into a care home in nearby Callander, where he eventually died.
Mrs Rossel also went initially into the nursing home, where Duncan turned up with two solicitors “and it was discussed that she’d be taking over” her financial affairs.
Mrs Rossel said in evidence: “Alice had charge of my pension book. Because I trusted her I didn’t take any observations at all of what was going on.
“I was just happy to be knitting and doing crosswords.”
‘Absolutely shattered’
However after Frans died in October 2014 and the undertaker’s bill arrived, Mrs Rossel found all the money from the sale of their bungalow had gone, together with other savings, and there wasn’t even anything accumulated from her pension.
Bonds that she and her husband had bought to cover the cost of their funerals were also gone. Duncan had cashed them in.
Mrs Rossel said: “I was shattered, absolutely shattered. What could I say to her? She’d just helped herself to everything that was mine.
“It was very embarrassing that I couldn’t pay the funeral directors for my husband’s cremation.”
Social workers called in police.
Last year the court heard a psychiatric report on Duncan had revealed she suffered from depression, anxiety, and symptoms of ME.
