BROTHERS Antony and Kevin Fawkner conned an old man into handing over his bank card before helping themselves to £30,000 from his savings.
The Coventry pair targeted the 96-year-old by posing at a member of staff from BT before calling at his home in Rugby where he lived alone claiming to be from TSB.
And after being arrested in connection with the scam in May last year they even tried their nasty trick out on another pensioner, an 86-year-old who also lived in Rugby, while on bail, stealing £6,000 from him.
Antony, 54, of Logan Road, was jailed for three years after pleading guilty at Warwick Crown Court to a total of nine charges of theft, one of attempted theft and one of fraud.
Kevin, 51, of Redcar Road, pleaded guilty to one charge of fraud, and was jailed for 18 months.
Judge Richard Griffith-Jones told the Coventry pair: “There are many thousands of elderly people who live in our country and a high proportion of them live on their own.
“Old age brings enough to worry about with their health and how they’re going to manage, and the need they have for self-confidence.
“This is the sort of nasty trick which in truth would probably have fooled many people who were much younger, but you selected them because they were old.
“Although the banks have compensated them, they did not know that at first.”
The court heard their first victim was initially telephoned by someone claiming to work for BT about a problem with his direct debit payment.
They said they would contact his bank before he received another call from a man posing as a member of staff at TSB, and told a colleague would call at his home, collect the card and arrange for another to be issued.
Prosecutor Ben Close said the victim was not sure whether he had revealed his PIN number, but it was then used on several occasions by Antony to take money from his account over the next two days.
He withdrew £3,000 from a Lloyds branch in Coventry the same day, followed by two £2,000 withdrawals from different branches the following morning.
Just after that, a £10,000 transfer from the old man’s savings account into his current account was activated and further withdrawals of £2,000 were then made by Antony from the Lloyds TSB branches in Earlsdon Street and Walsgrave Road in Coventry.
But when he tried to get another £2,000 from the branch in Foleshill Road, a suspicious cashier checked the details and realised the person at the counter was considerably younger than 96.
When arrested Kevin claimed he had no knowledge of what was going on and had just been asked by an acquaintance to pick up an envelope while Antony said he had been approached in a pub by a Nigerian who drove him round and paid him £500 for going into the banks to get the cash which he then handed over.
Judge Griffith-Jones was told both Fawkners had previous convictions for dishonesty, but nothing since the early 90s.
