A Met Police officer who racked up a £300 bill on Deliveroo and Amazon using a dead person’s bank card has been jailed for 20 months.
Amelia Lancaster, 28, took the card from a woman who took her own life in a hotel and used it to make £302.51 of fraudulent purchases online between October and November 2022.
She had turned her own body worn camera off but a colleague’s device showed Lancaster holding the woman’s card in one hand and her mobile phone in another.
Hamish Common, prosecuting, said it was safe to assume Lancaster took a picture of the card.
The dead woman’s brother, a serving Met Police officer named in court only as PC Hancock, discovered her card was being used two days after his sister’s funeral.
Reading his victim impact statement to the court, PC Hancock said he discovered the fraud ‘just two days after one of the worst days of my life’.
‘I cannot comprehend how morally bankrupt one must be to steal from the dead,’ he said. ‘The person sent to help her betrayed everything they stood for. You have tainted the memories I had of her and you have stolen any closure my family had.’
The woman’s mother said the card theft as ‘deepening the wound and prolonging the grief.’
She said: ‘You had seen her at her most vulnerable. I feel disgust at what I consider to be a violation.
‘I cannot understand you and yet I do nonetheless feel pity for you. I hope that one day you sincerely regret the actions that have brought you here today.
‘We have lost our daughter, sister, niece and friend in devastating circumstances and you made that pain worse.’
Lancaster also used the bank card details of four other people, including her flatmate, to spend another £302.40 between May 2021 and August 2022.
The crimes went undetected and after two and a half years with the Met, Lancaster had transferred to West Yorkshire Police, based in Bradford.
She also stole a personal trainer’s bank card to try and use it to buy vaping products.
Lancaster had befriended the gym’s owner and was allowed access to the staff room when she attended for classes.
He reported his concerns to the gym owner and the pair went to the shop where CCTV stills identified Lancaster using the bank card.
She had also taken his card on a previous occasion, seven days before, with the victim having lost £25 in total across the three thefts.
Tom Orpin-Massey, defending, told the court the other cards had been lost by members of the public and handed in to the police.
‘She took them from lost property and photographed the cards,’ said Mr Orpin-Massey. ‘She does express remorse to me today to the victims.
‘Throughout the medical reports where she has been interviewed she has expressed a profound sense of shame and self-loathing for her conduct.
‘It was her dream as a young lady to be a police officer, she was not cut out for it. A series of traumatic incidents she dealt with on duty, which appear to have left her profoundly damaged.’
She was arrested on October 19, 2023, and later sacked from West Yorkshire Police at a disciplinary hearing in Wakefield after a panel found her guilty of gross misconduct.
Lancaster admitted four counts of fraud by false representation and misconduct in public office at Kingston Crown Court.
Judge Peter Lodder, KC, told Lancaster: ‘As a serving Police Officer you enjoyed the trust of the public. You betrayed that trust by showing neither compassion or a sense of duty.
‘Your own life has been ruined by this behaviour.’
He jailed Lancaster for 20 months and ordered her to compensate her victims. Lancaster was also ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £187.
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