The former deputy manager of a care home in Harrogate has been jailed for over two years after stealing £30,000 from two disabled residents — one of whom had Alzheimer’s.

Anna Puczkielewicz, 43, “systematically” stole from the two care-home residents, one of whose bank accounts she drained of £25,000, York Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Henry Fernandez said that Puczkielewicz - who worked first as a care worker before being promoted to deputy manager at the specialist care home on Claro Road run by Disability Action Yorkshire - had been making unsolicited cash withdrawals from the victims’ accounts without their permission.

Puczkielewicz, who was deputy manager at the time of the offences, stole £25,000 from one of the victims, a man suffering from Alzheimer’s, and £5,000 from another man who had since died.

Mr Fernandez said the rampant thievery occurred over a “sustained period of time”.

Puczkielewicz, from Leeds, was arrested in March 2022 and charged with theft, but initially denied the allegations, claiming the victims had asked her to make the cash withdrawals for them.

A trial had been fixed for June this year, only for Puczkielewicz, of Ironwood View, Seacroft, to plead guilty a week beforehand. She appeared for sentence today (October 24).

Character references

The court heard that in 2014, Puczkielewicz received a police caution for stealing a phone.

Defence barrister Andrew Espley said that Puczkielewicz, a Polish national, had worked at the care home, which caters for people with disabilities, for 10 years before she started stealing from the two men.

After losing her job at the care home following the discovery of the thefts, Puczkielewicz had found new work as a £31,000-a-year senior manager at a recruitment company.

Mr Espley said that character references, including from her new employer, attested to Puczkielewicz being an otherwise “loyal, kind-hearted” woman.

He said that Puczkielewicz and her husband would lose their home and she wouldn’t be able to visit her elderly parents in Poland if she were jailed.

Recorder Dafydd Enoch KC said that Puczkielewicz had had over two years to admit her guilt from the point of arrest but had maintained her innocence until a week before the scheduled trial.

He said that her initial, now disproven, defence that the victims had given her permission to make the cash withdrawals was “almost as mean” as the offences themselves.

He told the former care worker:

Mr Enoch said that Puczkielewicz “chose these two (victims)…because you knew they were easier and you they probably wouldn’t stop what was going on.”

27-month sentence

Puczkielewicz was handed a 27-month jail sentence but was told she would only serve half of that behind bars before being released on prison licence.

After imposing sentence, the judge was told by defence counsel that Puczkielewicz’s promise to repay the money she had stolen had not materialised because she “hasn’t saved up any money to pay it back”.

When Mr Enoch asked defence barrister Mr Espley what had happened to the stolen £30,000, he replied:

Mr Espley said that Puczkielewicz’s combined household income was now limited.

The judge duly made no order for compensation.