A ‘ruthless’ student nurse jailed for stealing more than £250,000 from the estates of two dead strangers has refused to compensate their relatives by selling her house nine years later.
Georgia Forteath, 41, and her husband Harvil Connally, 49, duped the probate authorities in 2009 and 2010.
Forteath was planning to fund a property empire in Jamaica with the help of Connally and targeted two ex-Croydon residents – the late Frederick Lewis and Doreen Kimber.
She was siphoning off the money from their bank accounts and was preparing to sell their homes when a neighbour of Mr Lewis alerted his son Brian.
Georgia Forteath, 41, and her husband Harvil Connally, 49 (both pictured above), duped the probate authorities in 2009 and 2010. They were jailed for a total of 11 years
Forteath, of Lewisham, was convicted of a string of charges including obtaining leave to remain in the UK by deception, 15 counts of fraud, perjury and making a false representation on oath after a trial at Inner London Crown Court in 2011.
She was jailed for eight years and nine months while Connally was sentenced to three years for fraud and acquiring criminal property.
Forteath now claims she cannot pay anything because she only earns £300 per month and her children paid for the house in Lewisham.
The couple also face civil proceedings from the family of the victims, who have never received compensation following the fraud.
Her Lewisham property, bought for £240,000, is now subject to a restraint order, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic there is a pause on almost all evictions until January next year.
Mark Paltenghi, prosecuting, said: ‘Ms Forteath tells us she’s got no money, in a sense that rests on whether her house has any value, it’s almost doubled since she was sentenced.’
Forteath, who is representing herself, attended Isleworth Crown Court with Connally and two supporters.
She criticised Judge Simon Davis, who presided over her trial at Inner London Crown Court nine years ago, and accused him of being racist.
Forteath said: ‘You’ve been doing this for ten years and I have had enough of these unlawful acts. I went to prison unlawfully, Frederick Lewis’ spirit will never rest until you can bring it down.
She claims her prosecution was ‘unlawful,’ an ‘abuse of process’ and ‘in bad faith’.
Forteath (pictured with her husband) now claims she cannot pay anything because she only earns £300 per month and her children paid for the house in Lewisham
Forteath insists she had a ‘valid probate and will’ for the deceased pensioners she was convicted of defrauding.
Her draft legal argument, which was read to the court, stated: ‘It seems to me that Judge Davis makes up his own laws and applies them to me because I am black.
‘I as a black person have a proven will and was sent to prison. It is submitted that this court has no position to make judgement over me.
‘You cannot expect me to obey the law when you, the judges, are lawbreakers. You orchestrated my unlawful trial and conviction. Judge Davis misled the jury.
‘I came here today to make decisions on the same mess he created. How can you stand there with those huge planks in your eyes and tell me about the specks in my eyes. This is from the bible.’
Judge Davis adjourned the confiscation hearing until 21 December for full written arguments to be prepared.
Forteath was a nursing student at South Bank University when she bought her home in Lewisham, and still lives there with her husband and grown up children.
According to the original will, Brian Lewis was set to inherit half of his father’s £450,000 estate, with the other fifty per cent supposed to go to his brother.
Police then discovered Forteath had a second victim, Miss Kimber.
Miss Kimber’s name appeared as a co-executor on the bogus Lewis will, though the two pensioners had never met.
Forteath (pictured left) was jailed for eight years and nine months while Connally (right) was sentenced to three years for fraud and acquiring criminal property
It emerged that Forteath and Connally had been trying to sell her home in a £300,000 fraud.
Miss Kimber died intestate, meaning nobody was likely to challenge the fake will. When the student was arrested in 2010, she said she was a friend and carer of the deceased pensioners.
In 2011, Judge Davis said Forteath had told ‘lie upon lie upon lie’ to the jury.
‘The lies tripped off her tongue as easily as I’ve heard in 35 years of sitting in a court in criminal cases,’ he said.
Jurors had heard Forteath drained £233,952 from Mr Lewis’ two Santander bank accounts then transferred £180,000 to a joint account she held with her husband.
During the police investigation into the Lewis estate, officers contacted the Land Registry about Ms Kimber, who they discovered was a retired secretary who died on December 27, 2008, aged 78.
The childless woman had not made a will, telling her few friends she wanted to leave her £250,000 estate ‘to the animals’.
This helped Forteath, who with the assistance of another tailor-made will, took over the property, in Malvern Road, also Thornton Heath, in July 2010.
She and her husband then tried to transfer the title to Forteath. Forteath drained £13,900 from Ms Kimber’s account and went on a spending spree with her bank card.
She ordered a washing machine, fridge freezer, laptop and tumble dryer from Argos and posed as Miss Kimber in a call to the delivery line, which was recorded and played to the jury.
Connally helped to try and sell the property, instructing an estate agent to sell it for £250,000.
Police had discovered Forteath was living illegally in England after she travelled from Jamaica in April 2000 on a visitor’s visa, and was later refused a student visa.
To stay here she took part in a sham marriage and paid a recovering heroin addict called Stephen Forteath, whose flat she had rented, to wed her in December 2003.
As a spouse of a British citizen she was granted indefinite leave to remain in 2006.
She later married Connally and this enabled him to be granted discretionary leave to remain here until September 2012.
It was claimed during the trial she was planning to fund a property empire in her Jamaican homeland with the help of Connally.
Connally said he was a stonemason in Jamaica and joined the building trade when he came to this country, and knew Forteath from his homeland.
Forteath, of Lewisham, London, denied obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception, obtaining leave to remain in the UK by deception, 15 counts of fraud, perjury, making a false representation on oath, removing criminal property from England and Wales, possessing criminal property, acquiring criminal property, two counts of doing an act tending or intended to pervert the course of public justice.
She was cleared of the first charge and found guilty of all the others.
Connally was found guilty of fraud and acquiring criminal property.
Jailing Forteath for eight years and nine months in 2011, the judge told her: ‘You engaged in dishonest conduct, motivated by personal interest, greed, ruthlessness and a complete disregard for others, whether legitimate benefactors of a deceased’s estate or innocent people who were available to be used by you as pawns as you wove your web of deceit.
‘You set out to manipulate and lie, with an appetite for the fanciful rarely seen in my experience in the criminal justice system, with the sole intention of evading your own dishonest and dishonourable conduct over a number of years.
‘You were prepared to blame it on anyone and everyone else in an attempt to secure your acquittal.’