Great-gran Frances Connolly came to her daughter “with six pence” after more than £100,000 of her lifesavings was withdrawn from her account over the course of a few months
A “vulnerable” blind nan was left with just 6p to her name after more than £100,000 was wiped from her life savings over three months.
Frances Connolly’s family was left distraught and helpless after the 95-year-old’s savings were emptied from her Halifax account while she lived with her middle daughter, Sheila. The frail great-grandmother, who, as well as being blind suffers from dementia and is hard of hearing, had moved back to her martial home to live with Sheila in April 2021 after separating from her husband.
She had previously been living with her other daughter, Pat Kavanagh, who said her sister accompanied her to the Yorkshire Building Society, where the nan withdrew her entire £100,770 life savings. The six-figure sum was deposited into a new Halifax account set up by Sheila, who rapidly depleted her funds after Frances signed a document granting her access.
Bank statements shared with the Liverpool ECHO show her account was rapidly depleted down to just £31 in just 32 withdrawals between April and July. Among the withdrawals, the documents show, was a transfer of £80,000 to Frances’s husband’s bank just six days after the new account was established.
Days later, on April 29, an additional £10,000 was transferred into Sheila’s account, and a series of either £100 or £300 withdrawals followed at ATMs across Liverpool’s city centre, Maghull, and Allerton. On some occasions, the withdrawals amounted to £900, the documents showed.
Pat said the withdrawals felt “like a grenade has been thrown in the middle of our family” that no one saw coming, adding it had left both herself and her husband without prospects of retirement. The 65-year-old from Woolton said she had alerted Merseyside Police about the theft, but when her mum died in October 2024, the prospects of an investigation were lost.
The cash remained irretrievable when the Financial Ombudsman Service concluded Halifax was not at fault, as Frances had permitted Sheila to manage her account. Pat believes the bank should never have allowed her “confused” mum to sign “her life away” after her mum came to her “with six pence”.
Pat said: “How can you walk into a bank with someone in a wheelchair, who can’t even see, who can’t hear, and say they are capable of signing their life away? My mum came to me with six pence. She didn’t even have a pension when she came to us because we had to cancel her card. For two to three weeks I kept her. If she wasn’t in my home, she would have been dead.”
Pat said the family later discovered bank statements showing “daily transfers of £500” had also been taken from her dad’s account, which had nearly £200,000 inside. She said: “They had £185,000 from the sale of their house, they had their pensions, they had savings. It’s all gone, as far as we know. We don’t even know what it’s been spent on.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Halifax said the bank had “thoroughly investigted the concerns raised” by Pat, and found it had “acted appropriately”. They expressed “a great deal of sympathy” for the elderly nan’s family. They said: “This is a complex case and we have a great deal of sympathy for Mrs Connolly and her family.
“We have thoroughly investigated the concerns raised by Mrs Kavanagh on a number of occasions, relating to events which took place in 2021, and believe we acted appropriately in handling Mrs Connolly’s accounts. The independent Financial Ombudsman Service also reviewed the case and reached the same conclusion.”
