Charity Fraud Boss Saints and Scroungers

Theft of public money costs the UK taxpayer over £20 billion a year.

This case was one of the biggest we've ever had,

it came in to the region of about £500,000.

This is money which should be going into the public pot,

to spend on essential services.

The victims in this case are the public,

and the money could have been used to build schools or fund hospitals.

And there are specially trained investigators making sure

that justice is served.

The system cannot be beaten,

they will be held to account at some point.

In this series we meet the men and women across the UK committed

to catching criminals who steal from you and me -

the British taxpayer.

But we also hear stories from people who genuinely need

help from public money.

I'd swap places tomorrow with him if it meant he could walk.

I just didn't know where to turn or what to do.

And sometimes they don't even realise they're entitled to it.

I just thought I'm one of them lowlifes who's had an addiction.

We were lending money off so many people

because we just had no other way of paying the bills.

Coming up - the ruthless charity bosses who ripped off

the savings of vulnerable adults they were meant to be helping.

This is the worst kind of theft I think I've come across in 40 years.

It's left a scar on everybody.

A woman fraudulently claims almost £100,000 of public money.

That money will be recovered,

but it is a massive loss to the public purse.

And the remarkable achievement of one young girl after her

parents fought to get help.

I don't think she'd be as happy, independent,

loving, content...if she hadn't have gone there.

The Economic Crime Unit at Lincolnshire Police deals with

some of the most complex taxpayer frauds the country's ever seen.

Cheques, cheques, cheques.

It's a quiet backwater that I think a lot of fraudsters come back to,

and we do get quite a high volume of fraud coming through the force.

And one particularly big case the unit's recently investigated

is that of Peter and Alison Childs.

Mr and Mrs Childs were in an amazing position of trust,

and these are the type of people who put a huge amount of trust in them.

So what happened was absolutely disgraceful.

It involved an allegation of theft of taxpayers' cash

and benefit money from vulnerable adults.

I can't believe the scale of it, and actually,

if we'd had more time, goodness knows what we could have unearthed.

The case first came to light in September 2011.

It started as a report from Lincolnshire County Council

to the police, following a whistle-blowing letter that

had been sent to them by an anonymous person.

The letter concerned a small charity,

Lincoln and District Mencap.

Based in the centre of rural Lincolnshire,

they helped local disadvantaged people.

Now, they're not affiliated to the Royal Mencap Society,

but they are one of the 400 organisations that help

adults with learning disabilities.

It basically said that Alison and Peter Childs,

who were the main people at Lincoln and District Mencap,

had been taking money in the form of cash given over to them

by the service users they were supposed to provide a service for.

The service the charity offered was to help adults with

learning disabilities manage their benefits

so they could run their finances.

Obviously you have to tread carefully,

because whistle-blowing letters can be malicious

and I wasn't entirely sure what I was faced with.

Peter Childs had set up the charity in 1987

and Alison started working there after they were married.

This was a functioning charity that supported quite

a lot of vulnerable people in Lincolnshire,

and that service was still being provided,

but the first thing I did was I got John Hopkinson involved,

who's a financial investigator and a bit of an expert in that field.

All of the service users were on state benefit one way or another.

Mostly disability allowances.

So all of the money that was coming in to Mencap was actually

public money from the Department for Work and Pensions.

The first allegation that John was made aware of was regarding

the payment of utility bills.

They collected cash off them

every week to pay their utility bills for them.

And it was quite clear from looking at

the service users' utility bills,

and the amount of money that was being taken off them,

that too much was being taken off them.

Actually...£40 this time.

One of the witnesses at the charity told us that this money was being

placed into an envelope system every Monday morning

and then either Mr or Mrs Childs was taking it home.

And it seemed they were using it for their own general day-to-day living.

But obviously we had a mountain to climb in terms of finding out

exactly what was going on.

DC McGill and John Hopkinson needed to check the allegation that

more money than necessary was being taken to pay the utility bills.

We couldn't go any further until we'd spoken to them to see

if there was a genuine reason this cash was being taken,

so we interviewed Alison Childs first,

and she told us that her husband, Peter Childs,

was in fact taking lots of separate amounts of cash in an

envelope system - as described by the witnesses -

and he was taking this home on a weekly basis.

He was using the excuse that these payments

were for an honorarium for his various roles within the society.

An honorarium is a one-off payment for something you wouldn't

ordinarily receive a payment for, so chief executive,

financial director, secretary and chairman.

Four different roles, four different honorariums.

It's also worth mentioning that he did receive pay as well.

Having listened to the explanations of both

Mr and Mrs Childs, I concluded that this honorarium was just an excuse,

and it's tantamount to theft.

To my mind, they looked like they were just pocketing all of the cash.

But the police needed hard evidence,

so they obtained warrants to search the charity's office as well

as the main house and holiday home of Alison and Peter Childs.

Interestingly enough,

on the three premises we searched

we didn't find a single bank statement

relating to any of the four business accounts that we

knew Lincoln and District Mencap held.

It certainly raised suspicions, because I would

expect for a business to see folders with bank accounts.

They had admitted in interview that they didn't use

internet banking, so I would think it was pretty strange.

Plus staff members at the outset had told us

there had been a lot of shredding going on.

We were concerned that these bank accounts had been shredded.

There were no bank statements,

but there were audited business accounts.

When I looked at the balance sheets

and I couldn't find any documentation to support

the figures on the balance sheet, it was clearly...clearly wrong.

The people the Childs were stealing money from were locals

like Darren Leek, who'd come to rely on their services as real support.

If I'd got a problem or a health problem or whatever, he always

listened to me and understood me, you know,

about the house and whatever.

Darren has learning difficulties and is blind in one eye.

His mother Janet was surprised

when he said he wanted to move into a flat on his own 23 years ago.

BOTH: Hello!

It was a real big moment.

We took Darren down, we got this flat really nice for him.

-You all right?

-Yes, thank you.

-Give us a hug.

-Big hugs, as always.

-Yes.

'I thought all night Darren would ring to say,'

"I want to come home." I never slept.

But rang him next morning, he was right as rain. Loved it.

And I couldn't believe it.

Like others who used the charity, Darren would pay money directly to

them in cash and they would use it to sort out all his utility bills.

Darren was lucky that his mother also kept an eye on his finances.

After a while, she began to have her suspicions.

For a few years it worked quite well,

then they started cutting down what it covered.

Things went, and he was paying the same money

but it was covering less utility bills.

He had to pay some himself, they gradually knocked it down,

so it seemed quite expensive.

Eventually Janet and her husband stepped in to help their son.

When Darren first started doing direct debits, he was

-a lot, lot better off.

-Yes, he was, yes.

We knew exactly what he was spending

and he had extra money to save for holidays.

He did, that's right.

Paying by direct debit meant the money wasn't going

through the charity.

A lot of the youngsters hadn't got parents, and to me,

that was sort of who they targeted, financially.

We're lucky, we got a lucky escape really.

Cos so many of them have lost so much money.

-OK then.

-OK, luvvie, bye.

-Bye.

-Talk to you at eight.

Later, the police still have a long way to go to prove that

Alison and Peter Childs are guilty.

Now, it's only a tiny minority of charitable organisations

which break the rules.

Other local charities are a real lifeline.

Like any expectant parent, Shirley Moran was full of hope

and excitement about the arrival of her first child.

I had a really healthy pregnancy.

I didn't even have morning sickness.

Everyone at work said I looked blooming.

Everything was great.

No complications at all.

But when it came to the birth, things didn't go to plan.

It was failed ventouse, failed forceps,

and then it ended up in an emergency caesarean section.

It was a 30-hour labour.

I was physically drained throughout the labour, and I was scared.

At the end someone who saw me

said that my body was actually trembling with the trauma

at the end of the birth on the bed.

Shirley gave birth to a girl, and called her Ava.

It was quite a lot of panic, I didn't really know what was going on.

I just remember, I saw her briefly and she was whisked away.

Later found out that she'd had a fit after she was born

and she'd gone into shock, and she'd been put into a self-induced coma

to reduce the swelling on the brain.

It didn't seem to affect me in the beginning -

I was just so happy that she was alive.

But an MRI scan of Ava's brain when she was two days old

showed that something was wrong on the left side.

Hello, Shirley. How are you? You all right?

Thank you very much.

I mean, people talk about instincts and maternal instincts...

Did you have a feeling with Ava that she had a problem

from the beginning?

Because we were lucky enough to have the MRI scan,

we did know there was something wrong with Ava's brain.

But the consultant couldn't say what it would mean -

they couldn't say if she'd walk or talk.

We didn't know if she'd ever be able to stand or sit unsupported.

You're being very matter of fact, there,

but what you're describing sounds incredibly scary.

Yeah, it was very hard. I suffered a lot of trauma after the birth.

Mentally.

Yeah, it was a really difficult time.

The first few months after the birth were a little bit of a blur.

When you try and explain that to people,

do they understand what a traumatic birth entails, what's involved?

Mm... Not really.

It's hard.

Like, I just kept going to the neonatal unit when she was poorly.

I just kept functioning.

It wasn't till she was supposed to reach milestones

that we noticed that something was wrong.

She wasn't sitting up, her right hand was always clenched,

and her head was slightly... always leant to the right.

I'm trying to imagine how that feels.

It must have been incredibly difficult to deal with.

It didn't really sink in until the January after she was born,

so when she was about six months old,

that's when I became very depressed about the whole thing.

It was around this time that Ava was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

I didn't even know what cerebral palsy was.

It was Ava's physiotherapist who first used the word,

when she was six months old, diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

Before then, I didn't know what it was.

And everyone who has cerebral palsy's different,

so it was hard to know what Ava would be like.

They were offered physical therapy on the NHS

to help move Ava's arms and legs.

The occupational therapist used to give things like special cutlery

and the physiotherapist used to encourage me

to do, like, messy play with her.

I didn't even think Ava would walk or talk.

I was happy she was there and alive,

but I wasn't positive about her future.

I didn't know whether she'd ever be independent or happy.

I was just focused on getting her the best help she could get,

and therapies.

Shirley found out about a charity which

specialises in a form of physical education

which helps children with cerebral palsy.

And fortunately the main centre for the national institute

is in Birmingham, which was on their doorstep.

OK, so you walked through the door.

Talk me through the first contact you had with them.

Ava was crying and I tried to get her to walk,

holding on to, like, a wooden ladder thing.

It was really, really hard, the first...

I'd say at least the first four classes.

Conductive education focuses on learning through physical movement.

Its aim is to help children to become as independent as possible.

At first I wasn't sure if this was the place for Ava to come,

and then as the weeks went on I saw the improvement in Ava.

She was using her right hand more, she was less frustrated.

She learnt to sit independently very quickly.

She was a lot happier coming to the classes.

Having found the right place for Ava,

Shirley now had a battle on her hands

finding the money to pay for Ava to attend full time.

I was just amazed that there was a place like that

so close on my doorstep.

Shirley was determined to get help with the funding.

Eventually, her local authority agreed to cover the costs

so that Ava could attend four days a week.

So, you were starting to see the first real signs of progress.

Before long, she could sit independently on a seat

without anyone helping her.

That was the first milestone she did there.

Ava was nearly toilet trained - and then it just all got better,

and easier.

I think one of the key things with any child with cerebral palsy,

for example Ava, is that early intervention.

So, when the child is very young, the families are...

You're concerned, you're confused,

you're not sure what to do with the child,

because they're not, perhaps, the child that you were anticipating.

So what we can do is provide very early support

so you can integrate the child into the family,

give the parents confidence in how to deal with the child,

and that sets the child on a route to development.

When she was four years old, Ava reached another big milestone.

I remember collecting Ava from school

and one of the staff basically said to me, "Watch this."

And she took a few steps towards me.

They had their arms, like, in case she swayed, but she took a few steps.

And I'd been saying to them previous to that, "Will she walk?

"Do you think she'll ever walk?"

And they said, "Yes, yes," but I didn't believe them.

It was something that I never thought I'd see happen,

and I was very proud and happy.

And this is Ava today, aged eight.

# And on that farm he had a.... #

I didn't think Ava would be so independent, and confident, as well.

I mean, she can cut her own food, use a knife and fork.

She can cut soft food, she can manipulate her two hands

to squeeze the toothpaste and have the toothbrush there.

Never thought she'd ever walk up the stairs,

let alone do it without holding on. Um...

Putting on her own splints, obviously, and I taught her

to ride a trike, and she can also ride a normal bike with stabilisers.

Very good, Ava. Good stopping. Slow down.

At home it's quite hard sometimes to get Ava to do, like, her homework

and bits and bobs.

You know, she needs a little bit of encouragement, like most children.

But at school she's very good.

Because of the praise she's given

when she achieves doing something, and the encouragement she's given.

So, I would like to nominate this week a little girl

who's worked really hard.

She listened hard in my lesson, and that's Ava.

Yeah!

Shall we have a little look?

Ooh!

Whose name is that?

-Well done for working hard this week, and sit...

-Settling...

..settling in school.

-Wow! Would you like to admire it as well?

-Yeah!

I've been... Take it home!

Shall we all give Ava a big clap?

Well done. Very good.

Come on, little miss.

-Bye, Ari.

-Bye, Ari!

Ava's very lucky.

A lot of people, children,

adults with cerebral palsy don't have such great speech that Ava does.

William took Mrs...

..Lacey's dog...

Moo!

SHE LAUGHS

She learnt to sing at conductive education

before she could actually talk, and then her speech got better.

# Uh-oh, things you never said to me

# Uh-oh, tell me that you've had enough... #

Her music talents are amazing, her singing,

she picks up a song as soon as she hears it. Really quick.

That is brilliant!

And Ava has a circle of friends, too,

since Mum enrolled her in some clubs.

-This is on the Brownie holiday.

-Oh, she's a Brownie!

-Yeah.

That is brilliant.

And with something like the Brownies,

can she take part in everything that's going on?

Are there any limits to what she can do there?

She's learnt to finger knit...

She's learnt a lot of things there, like making crafts and whatnot.

The only thing she might struggle with is

if they were playing games that involved a lot of fast

running and jumping - she'd just be a bit slower.

Ah!

Oh, there you are.

So, we've had a rule here that any time Ava needs help,

she will ask for it - don't push help onto her.

Because she needs to be independent, like any other child.

Last year, in August, she came on a Brownie holiday with us

for a whole week.

Her mum came with us, but Ava didn't treat her mum as her mum.

Her mum was just one of the other helpers.

She did everything that all the other girls did.

We went swimming, we went walking, we made things.

She had to cook and wash up like everyone else,

and that was brilliant.

And she's doing that at home now as well.

There are two sides to this, really.

There are what the centre has done for Ava,

-and what they've done for you.

-Yeah, yeah.

I'll always be grateful for what they've done.

I don't think she'd be as happy, independent, loving, content,

if she hadn't have gone there.

Shirley's wish for her daughter was that she could go to

a mainstream school.

And the institute has had such a positive impact on Ava's life,

that she's started part-time in a primary class,

and will soon be going full-time.

Don't help me!

My aim for Ava is to live as happy and independent a life as possible.

She's had a great start.

I don't think my life would be as happy either,

and I'm very proud of her.

I couldn't wish for a more happy, beautiful,

confident, independent daughter.

I never thought it would be possible for her to reach the way she is now.

The vast majority of people would never dream of claiming more

benefits than they're entitled to.

A tiny number are not so honest, but they do have a big effect.

Benefit fraud costs the UK taxpayer £1.2 billion per year.

There are those determined to protect the public purse, though.

Across the UK, investigators are using surveillance stings

to identify people who are abusing the system.

Blackburn mum-of-seven Cleo Embley was one such person.

We received an anonymous tip-off

to the benefit fraud hotline for Cleo Embley.

She was, at the time of the allegation in September 2011,

in receipt of income support for herself and seven children.

Yeah, it's here, yeah.

Income support is there to help people who are unable to work

because they are sick or disabled,

or people on a very low or no wage who have dependents.

She was getting income support on the grounds that

she was looking after her dependent children and couldn't work,

and that she lived alone in a local authority house,

for which she was receiving housing benefit of £75 per week.

Roy and his team at the Department for Work and Pensions

contacted the local council to ask for their help in their enquiries.

The details we had on her original claim form that were

submitted to us, that she was a single parent,

she wasn't working, she had dependent children,

and that she was supposedly living at this address

as a single parent on her own.

So, on paper, everything looked above board,

but Roy had been tipped off that something wasn't right.

The allegation was saying that she had a partner living with her

who was in gainful employment.

If the allegation was correct, that she was living with a man who

was working and could support her, this would mean that Cleo Embley

was not entitled to the benefits she was claiming.

So we did the usual background intelligence checks using

Social Security Fraud Act powers to look at bank account statements,

and checking with local authority records, schools

and getting birth certificates,

seeing who the father of the children were.

Our background checks gave rise to believing that

the allegation in this case was potentially correct.

But what they really needed was concrete proof that a partner

was living with her and that he was working.

In order for us to actually confirm for sure that she had

a partner living with her, we conducted a period of surveillance.

Cases that try to prove a couple are living together

are quite common, but are very labour-intensive.

They can take months to reach a resolution.

Cleo Embley and her partner were under surveillance

for a period of four weeks.

During that time, we saw her partner leaving the house in the morning

and at night-time, and also coming back to the house

after a shopping trip,

so they were behaving as a married couple,

and he was going out to work.

This provided Roy and his team with enough evidence to prove that

Cleo Embley was living with someone who was working full-time.

That meant the benefits she was claiming were illegal.

In March 2012, police arrested Cleo Embley

and she was brought in for questioning.

When we went into the house on the day of the arrest,

Cleo Embley said that her partner didn't live in the house,

that he lived in the caravan at the side of the house,

which was out of view from the street.

This was news to us, so we videoed the caravan,

and it was quite obviously not used for sleeping in.

It was used more like a children's den.

So they interviewed the suspected partner separately

to get his side of the story.

The partner subsequently gave us

a witness statement saying that he'd lived

as a partner for 15 years and they'd had seven children together.

The authorities now had enough evidence to prove that

Cleo Embley was cheating the system.

Cleo Embley's status as a claimant was as a single parent,

who had seven dependent children,

and therefore was unable to seek work and was being paid income support

on the grounds that she was looking after dependent children.

In actual fact, we found that she was living with a partner,

and the partner had had a series of jobs,

both employed and self-employed,

and was in a position to financially support her and the seven children.

The team gathered the evidence and took the case to court.

In court, she pleaded guilty to all three charges

of section 111a of the Social Security Administration Act

of failing to notify of a change in circumstances dishonestly

by not mentioning the fact that her partner was in employment

and was living with her.

In total, Cleo Embley had cheated the taxpayer

out of £94,000 in benefit payments she wasn't entitled to.

Money intended for people who really need it.

At court, the judge was scathing of Cleo Embley's blatant fraud...

..and gave an appropriate sentence

according to the sentencing guidelines,

sending her to prison for six months.

She was sent to prison,

leaving behind her seven dependent children,

and this is a person previously of hitherto good character,

so the judge really sent a strong message to other fraudsters

that no matter what your circumstances

or the fact that you've got a clean record in the past,

if you steal money from the Government, and in her case,

nearly £100,000, the right outcome is a custodial sentence,

which is exactly what she got.

In 2014, Cleo Embley was evicted from her home

and has been disqualified from using social housing again.

She's been ordered to pay back the money she owes to the state.

It is being recovered, albeit on a very, very small

and slow basis, but that money will be recovered.

But it is a massive loss to the public purse.

Ironically, Cleo Embley could have legitimately claimed other benefits

from the state, such as Working Family Tax Credit,

but her cheating has meant she's lost

much more than she ever could have gained.

As a family, they're saddled with an overpayment of £94,000.

In Lincoln, a devious couple were stealing public money

from people who legitimately claim it to fund their own lifestyle.

Peter and Alison Childs' charity, which helped vulnerable adults,

had come under scrutiny,

following allegations that they had stolen benefit money

from the very people they were supposed to be helping.

This is the hub of where everything happened.

This is the building we searched on two or three occasions,

and where all the hundreds and thousands of documents came from

that eventually sealed the Childs' fate.

But those searches had found no bank statements,

so DC McGill and her team had to get access to all of the Childs'

personal and business bank accounts.

We can't do that just by ringing the bank.

We have to approach a Crown Court judge to ask him to provide us

with an order to serve on the banks

to allow them to hand the accounts to us,

so that involved quite a lot of work.

None of the money has been used to

settle the bills of those service users

and none of it has been returned to them.

After two weeks John's

team had their hands on the documents for all the Childs'

bank accounts.

There were thousands and thousands of pages of transactions over

the course of five years.

One of the main things I was looking for, cos they were taking so much

cash off the service users, was cash going into those business accounts.

So that they could pay the utility bills of the service users.

And there wasn't any cash going into those business accounts.

I think there were signs that Peter Childs knew that he had done

something wrong because he would occasionally say,

"This doesn't look very good, does it?"

But then he would soon backtrack and become confident

and make confident excuses as to why he'd taken cash.

They were scamming the victims in a number of different ways, really.

They'd taken cash as utility maintenance payments from

the victims and then spent it upon themselves.

There was also allegations that they'd taken

part of some of the service users' disability living allowance.

It was also where they'd been keeping

the savings for the service users.

And they'd taken that home, as well.

It appears that they're lying to the service users about what

they're going to do with this cash.

And then they're taking the cash from them and using

if for something else, which is fraud rather than straight theft.

This was benefit money which belonged to the adults with learning

disabilities who trusted the Childs to use it to pay their bills.

But John's searches revealed other evidence of fraud.

The investigation was going well.

But at this point it started to snowball.

We started to be able to put some figures to the allegations and

it was quite clear that hundreds of thousands of pounds had been stolen.

John's team notices lots of transactions to a company

called Black Knight Security.

A company that had been set up by Peter Childs.

I added up all of the money that had been

transferred from the MENCAP accounts

to Black Knight Security.

And it came to over £100,000.

And there was absolutely no reason for MENCAP to pay that money

to Black Knight Security.

In fact,

I couldn't find any evidence that Black Knight Security ever traded.

Although Mr Childs said it did in a very small way.

It looked like this company had been set up as a way of transferring

money from the charity to make it look legitimate.

But in the accounts they discovered something even more shocking.

A wage for someone that no-one had ever heard of.

It turned out they were payments to Peter Childs' mistress.

With whom he had a son.

She told me she had worked at the Childs' home address looking

after their horses and their dogs and general homecare.

But she was being paid a wage.

She was completely unaware this wage was coming from the charity MENCAP.

Not only did the evidence reveal the benefit money was being

used to pay for Peter's secret family...

..the Childs were also using it to fund their own lifestyle.

They bought a holiday lodge and horses for their children.

All that was left was to prove that Peter and Alison Childs knew that

what they were doing was a deliberate act to defraud the charity.

I think the business accounts certainly nailed them.

When we interviewed them about those business accounts,

we interviewed them about the signature of the auditor

and Mr Childs said he didn't know who signed those accounts.

In Alison Childs' second interview she admitted to

signing off the annual accounts

as the financial auditor

and basically sign as David James who we later found out didn't exist.

Having admitted forging the accounts and with witness statements

supporting the evidence, the police now had their case.

This is one of the biggest cases that I've dealt with in Lincoln.

It is a very big case.

It's a serious case and one of considerable complexity.

In November, 2012 the Crown Prosecution Service said

police had enough evidence to charge both Alison

and Peter Childs with fraud and theft.

This was an exploitation by Mr and Mrs Childs...

..of the vulnerable people who were members of the Lincoln MENCAP...

..society.

And it was also an exploitation by them

of the business of Lincoln MENCAP, as well.

Because they were clearly taking money from the business

of Lincoln MENCAP as well as from the service users.

Some of them would have been aware

but their level of understanding is limited.

Some of them wouldn't know the difference between £10 and £10,000.

And I think that is why they were preyed upon in the first place.

As a result of our investigation and what had happened here, the Lincoln

MENCAP charity was disrupted and stopped functioning as a business.

It's now closed down.

The building itself has been taken over by another company.

The bogus charity run by the Childs may be defunct but there

are many more genuine organisations helping vulnerable adults.

Of 400 grassroots, local organisations,

all provide a range of services to individuals and families.

The overwhelming majority of which is high quality

support and makes a real difference to families in the here and now.

Unfortunately we still see negative attitudes towards people with

a learning disability.

It can range from bullying,

harassment, right through to hate crime.

So I think we and a number of other organisations do a good job

supporting those individuals.

I think it's important to remember the individual actions of

Mr and Mrs Childs should in no way be taken as representative

of the 400 organisations that work across the UK.

The vast majority of those are staffed by hard-working,

long-serving, dedicated support staff.

It's important we recognise and remember the work they do

and not focus on the actions of two individuals.

Which were about to be exposed for all to see.

In January 2014 Peter

and Alison Childs were brought to trial at Lincoln Crown Court.

Peter Childs was charged with numerous theft and fraud offences.

He pleaded guilty to one of the fraud offences initially.

Not guilty to everything else

and Alison pleaded not guilty to everything.

Hence the start of a six-week trial.

If the Childs had admitted the charges at this stage it would

have avoided the cost of a trial with a jury at the crown court.

All of which is paid by you and me, the taxpayer.

Mr Childs was quite confident throughout. So was Mrs Childs.

And it was only towards the end that they began to accept what

they'd probably done.

The court heard that in 2007 one couple with learning

disabilities entrusted £43,000 of their savings to the Childs.

You have to look at theft.

Theft is theft but this is the worst kind of theft I think I've

come across in 40 years.

You have to look at the vulnerability of the victims

in this.

I don't think they have an awful lot in their lives.

And what they did have, these people took it off them.

In total the Childs defrauded their victims out of over £200,000.

And were jailed for three years each.

But the impact of this case remains.

For families like Darren Leek and his mum, Janet.

One of the youngsters did say to us,

"If Pete had needed money, I would have given him it.

"He didn't have to steal from me." And that's how they thought of him.

I thought he was really a genuine person.

I can't believe it, you know?

That he's done it to all of us, the people.

The pair of them were mean and calculating

and a nasty piece of work, really.

The Childs' assets were frozen in 2012.

And in the autumn of 2014 a court will decide how much the couple have

benefitted from their crimes and just how much they have to pay back.

The trust issue is a big thing. Lincoln MENCAP ran like a family.

All the victims and victims' families

we spoke to were fully on board with Peter and Alison Childs.

They treated them like members of their own family.

They trusted them implicitly.

So when this all came out

and the investigation started it really hit them hard.

It's left a scar on everybody.

Cos these youngsters, who are they going to trust?

They're not going to trust, are they?

'Like I said to my son, "If you have a problem, go to Pete with anything."

'He reminds me, "You told me'

"he was wonderful, you know?"

Normally your family believe you, don't they?

We were wrong and everybody was wrong.