Couple who stole £1.1million from hospital jailed for 10 years after spending money on Turkish villa and home improvements at their country home
- Anne Baker submitted fake invoices to a fictional radiologist for 13 years
- Worked as department manager at Princess Grace Hospital London
- She and her husband spent most of the money on 2.5 acre Cornwall estate
- They also spent £100,000 on a luxury holiday villa in Bodrum, Turkey
By STEVE NOLAN and VANESSA ALLEN PUBLISHED: 13:16 GMT, 13 August 2013 | UPDATED: 01:00 GMT, 14 August 2013
A fraudster couple who used £1.1million stolen from a hospital to fund their decadent lifestyle were jailed yesterday. Anne and Andrew Baker spent the money on landscaping their garden and installing cascading waterfalls and fountains at their Grade II-listed ‘dream home’.The couple also bought a luxury villa in Turkey with the cash Anne Baker stole from her job at the Princess Grace Hospital in Marylebone, West London.
Andrew Baker and Anne Baker, pictured outside Southwark Crown Court, were jailed for 10 years between them for a 13-year scam which saw them gain £1.1million in hospital funds
Splashing out: The couple spent a large chunk of the money in the grounds of their 2.5 acre Cornwall home, Manderley
Grand: Mr and Mrs Baker spent money of fountains and waterfalls for the gardens of their home, which is a popular wedding venue
Thousands of pounds were hidden in Turkish bank accounts and £25,000 was stashed in a gun cupboard at their 16th-century home, where the Bakers also kept two Jaguar sports cars and an Aston Martin.Baker, 61, stole the money in a ‘breathtaking’ 13-year fraud which saw her pocket four times her salary as a manager at the hospital’s radiology department. She invented a fictional ‘Dr Baker’ and submitted 131 bogus invoices to her department for radiology consultancy services. She then signed off the invoices herself, using her maiden name Anne Fitzpatrick, and pocketed £1.14million.Baker worked at the hospital for 29 years and ran the ‘well-oiled’ fraud from 1999 to 2012 without detection, Southwark Crown Court in Central London heard.Her deception was uncovered only when an internal audit in 2012 discovered there was no ‘Dr Baker’ at the private hospital.
Lavish: The couple also paid almost £100,000 for a holiday villa in Bodrum Turkey (file picture)
Andrew Baker and Anne Baker, pictured outside Southwark Crown Court, were jailed for 10 years between them for a 13-year scam which saw them gain £1.1million in hospital funds
Splashing out: The couple spent a large chunk of the money in the grounds of their 2.5 acre Cornwall home, Manderley
Grand: Mr and Mrs Baker spent money of fountains and waterfalls for the gardens of their home, which is a popular wedding venue
Thousands of pounds were hidden in Turkish bank accounts and £25,000 was stashed in a gun cupboard at their 16th-century home, where the Bakers also kept two Jaguar sports cars and an Aston Martin.Baker, 61, stole the money in a ‘breathtaking’ 13-year fraud which saw her pocket four times her salary as a manager at the hospital’s radiology department. She invented a fictional ‘Dr Baker’ and submitted 131 bogus invoices to her department for radiology consultancy services. She then signed off the invoices herself, using her maiden name Anne Fitzpatrick, and pocketed £1.14million.Baker worked at the hospital for 29 years and ran the ‘well-oiled’ fraud from 1999 to 2012 without detection, Southwark Crown Court in Central London heard.Her deception was uncovered only when an internal audit in 2012 discovered there was no ‘Dr Baker’ at the private hospital.
Lavish: The couple also paid almost £100,000 for a holiday villa in Bodrum Turkey (file picture)
Mr Baker, left, was convicted of two counts of money laundering, while Mrs Baker, right, admitted false accounting and money laundering prior to her husband's case
Her 65-year-old husband knew about the scam and was a key beneficiary from his wife’s stolen cash, the court was told.The couple spent the money on lavish home improvements at their historic house and 2.5-acre gardens near Launceston in Cornwall.
Denial: Mr Baker, pictured, had denied that he knew anything of his wife's fraud
They marketed the house, known as Manderley, as a wedding venue and boasted that it had a 30ft koi carp lake, an exotic bird aviary, its own pitch-and-putt golf course and a series of dramatic waterfalls built from Dartmoor stone.The Bakers spent £88,882 on building work on the sprawling detached home and invested £94,000 on a luxury villa in Bodrum, Turkey, before hiding £85,000 in two Turkish bank accounts. Prosecutor Hugh Forgan told the court that Anne Baker’s fraudulent income ‘dwarfed’ the couple’s genuine earnings, and that her husband was aware of her scam.‘Mr Baker turned the house in Cornwall into something rather splendid,’ he said. ‘The defendant knew he could afford it because he knew full well what his wife was up to.’Belfast-born Anne Baker admitted false accounting and money laundering and confessed she had taken up to £179,000 from the hospital every year.
She has since been declared bankrupt and the private healthcare firm which ran the hospital has begun legal proceedings to retrieve the stolen money. Her lawyer Justin Rivett said: ‘Initially she hadn’t set out to defraud her employers over a long period of time, but events just simply carried on. She spent a lot of money and most of it did go on Manderley. It was a large property and expensive to maintain.’Baker said her husband did not know about the deception and he denied money laundering. He told the court he believed the money had come from the sale of a flat in London, and a £132,000 ‘bonus’ given to his wife when she retired. But the jury rejected his account and the judge said his explanation was ‘patently untrue’. Anne Baker was jailed for four years and her husband, a qualified civil engineer, was jailed for six years. His longer jail term reflected his decision to plead not guilty, meaning his case came to trial.
