Agent jailed for attempting to swindle 89-year-old vendor in care home

A rogue estate agent has been jailed for 10 months for what a judge has described as a “thoroughly dishonest” act, trying to swindle an 89-year-old woman by buying her flat in his wife’s name for £10,000 less than he intended to sell it.

Last month we reported that Stephen John Jones - who until recently ran Conwy Estate Agents - pleaded guilty to fraud by abuse of position by acting against the financial interests of the pensioner who was in a nursing home.

Caernarfon Crown Court heard that the 89 year old owner of a flat in Colwyn Bay was in a nursing home; her flat was advertised in Jones’s agency and was to be sold for £17,000 at the end of 2014. 

But it then emerged that Jones was selling the property to his wife. There was the alleged intention to then enter a so-called back-to-back sale, for as much as £27,000. However, the sales were halted when the police intervened following a tip-off from the local authority.

Now the Wales Daily Post is reporting that Jones was described as “a hard working man with a wife and three children who had built up a business which included estate agency” and that he is aware that he was “the author of his own misfortune.”

However, Judge Harris-Jenkins told Jones he had acted “in a thoroughly dishonest manner” which could have been to the detriment of an elderly woman needing the cash to pay for her care. 

The estate agency has now closed.