Fraudster family faked illness to scam council out of £734,000 over 12 years

Three members of a family have been convicted of fraud after swindling a local authority out of £734,000 by faking a neurological condition to claim a care package for 12 years.

Husband and wife Laura and Philip Borrell – who once appeared on This Morning to discuss dementia – along with Mrs Borrell’s mother, Frances Noble, conspired to commit fraud by convincing Hertfordshire County Council that Ms Noble, 66, had a brain disorder.

The trio, from the village of Weston, near Hitchin, succeeded in accessing a ‘direct payments care package’ worth £733,936.20 from the council between August 1, 2005 and November 30, 2018, according to The Comet.

It is believed to be one of the largest frauds ever committed against a local authority. 

Care packages such as the one they received are meant for those who need assistance in paying for their own care and support services – but the Borrells and Noble kept the money for themselves. 

Neighbours started to become suspicious after noticing that although Mrs Borrell did not appear to work, they saw a huge number of packages arrive at her house.

One resident told The Times: ‘Delivery vans all day long… ordering lots of stuff, like money was no object.’

Another added: ‘There were Amazon vans coming every single day. And then this brand new top-of-the-range Volvo arrived. You started thinking, what does he do? What does she do?’

Hertfordshire county council then began a fraud investigation after carers became suspicious that Noble was exaggerating the extent of her needs.

Subsequently, the Borrells were accused of assisting the pensioner by laundering the proceeds of her crime. 

All three – who have lived in Germany for the past few months – were due to stand trial at St Albans Crown Court on Wednesday, April 27 after pleading not guilty in June 2020.

They changed their pleas to guilty this week and are due to be sentenced on June 24.

Although the Borrells returned to the UK ten days ago before their court hearing, Frances Noble is still in Berlin, and continues to deny any wrongdoing.

The pensioner said that the guilty pleas were an effort to bring an end to a case they are running out of money to fight, according to The Times.

Meanwhile, in 2017, Mrs Borrell – then aged 39 – appeared on This Morning, where she was introduced by hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield as ‘one of the youngest people to be diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia’.

She told them she’d received the devastating dementia diagnosis but that it had been a battle to initially get doctors to take her seriously.

Borrell said doctors were baffled by her condition, assuming she was too young to have dementia, and told her she was being ‘hysterical’.  

Appearing alongside her husband, Borrell said: ‘I thought I was absolutely going crazy. They [neurologists] were vile, they were so rude to me, they even referred to me as a hysterical white female.’  

Laura explained how she had to give up her studies and became afraid to leave the house when she found herself easily confused, forgetful and struggling with her speech.

In June 2015, she said that tests revealed she had frontotemporal degenerative dementia – a condition very rarely seen in anyone under the age of 65.

The family then began fundraising so she could have one last road trip with her husband before her memories were ‘taken away’.

Mrs Borrell said her symptoms became progressively worse and she dropped out of her law degree at the University of London, despite having another two years of the course still to complete.

Unan Choudhury, a lawyer representing Laura, told The Times that she denies any allegation of wrongdoing relating to the dementia. 

He said: ‘She has suffered with serious neurological illnesses in the past and continues to suffer with illnesses now. She is receiving specialist treatment for her various conditions.’