A PROSTITUTE has been banned from all Swindon Council-run old people’s homes after she fleeced an 87-year-old war veteran out of his savings.

Terri-Lee Pearce, 30, was slapped with an anti-social behaviour order by a judge who said she had taken advantage of widower Allan Thipthorpe by overcharging him for her services.

The council, who applied for the Asbo against Pearce, of Woodsman Road, presented evidence at Swindon Magistrates’ Court yesterday that the pensioner had withdrawn almost all of the money in his bank account – reducing his funds from £5,000 in October last year to just £100 this month – to pay her.

Pearce, who did not attend the hearing, admitted being with Mr Thipthorpe when he made several large withdrawals, including one of £500 and another of £300, in November last year, and District Judge Simon Cooper said he was satisfied she had pressured him into the transactions.

“She has stripped a vulnerable old man of his dignity and all his money,” he said.

Borough solicitor Francis Maples told the court Mr Thipthorpe had entertained Pearce at his flat in the council-run sheltered housing scheme Elizabeth House, in Queens Drive, as far back as 2011, but towards the end of last year she had stepped up her visits.

Police first became aware of a potential issue when a security guard at Tesco, Steve O’Brien, reported Pearce had gone to a nearby store at around midnight, after she had woken the pensioner up, and asked to get £200 cashback at the till in October last year.

Later Tony Flavo, a cashier at Santander bank in the town centre, raised the alarm after the victim had been withdrawing large amounts of money while Pearce waited outside and later he broke down in tears in the branch when he was told he did not have enough money left.

Mr Maples said: “This is an unpleasant case of financial abuse of an elderly man who has certainly been stupid, very stupid at times, but now realises the extent of his folly.”

PC Louise Kuklinski, Swindon’s vice manager for Wiltshire Police, also told the court that when she visited Mr Thipthorpe last Monday, he had been upset because he could not afford to repair the axle on his mobility scooter, which he needed to get out of the house.

She said: “I think he has realised what has happened to him and maybe breaking down and not having the ability to sort his scooter out with his own funds might have been the turning point in him co-operating with us.”

Martin Guyll-Wiggins, defending, said the victim had exercised freedom of choice to get involved with Pearce, but he conceded she had charged the pensioner more than she should have done.

In banning Pearce from contacting the victim and from entering any of the 32 council-run sheltered housing schemes indefinitely, Judge Cooper said: “It has been put to me that he achieved this position through freedom of choice. “I am more sanguine about his freedom of choice – I doubt he had it.

“He was beguiled and overcome by this woman. Her abuse of Mr Thipthorpe, and that is the only way to describe it, has led to his sexual and inappropriate conduct and distressed the other residents.

“She has stripped a vulnerable old man of his dignity and all his money and in doing so has caused him very great distress, such that he is unable to repair his lifeline to the world, which is his mobility scooter.”