A FRAUDSTER who hid in woodland after conning a pensioner out of £25,000 was caught when he came home for a shower.

Mark McGuire was jailed for 20 months at Oxford Crown Court yesterday for swindling 77-year-old Barbara Wellman of Banbury.

McGuire befriended the Salvation Army worker while she helped him and other visitors at one of the organisation’s drop-in centres.

After giving a false name he told Miss Wellman he needed to visit his sick mother in the north of England, so she gave him money for a train ticket.

The retired headteacher went on to give him monthly cheques for £1,000, thinking it would be a loan he would use to pay his Oxford rent.

It turned out the defendant was actually living rent free with a friend, the court heard. After McGuire’s scam was detected he was arrested and charged before being released on bail.

He then vanished and fled to woodland where he camped for a year-and-a-half until he went to his sister’s for a shower and the police caught him.

Roger Coventry, prosecuting, told the court Miss Wellman had met 46-year-old McGuire at the Salvation Army centre close to her home.

She thought lending him the money was “the Christian thing to do”.

But she was starting to lose her memory and struggling to look after her affairs, the court was told.

Mr Coventry said: “Once a cheque for £4,000 pounds was given to him and there were other cheques.”

McGuire’s scam was uncovered when he asked a friend to cash the £4,000 cheque for him, but he refused and police were informed.

The defendant, of Binswood Avenue, Leamington Spa, was arrested in August 2009 and appeared before Banbury Magistrates’ Court. He failed to answer his bail and then went on the run.

Andrea Ferguson, defending, said McGuire was a chronic alcoholic at the time he carried out the fraud, to which he pleaded guilty yesterday.

He had missed his 2009 hearing because of a panic attack, and then fled to the woods she added.

She said: “During that period of time he had pangs of conscience on a number of occasions but was unable to face the music.

“It’s a matter of what he was doing during that period of time. He was not spending the money and living a life of luxury, he was camping and said he did so looking continuously over his shoulder, knowing this was going to come back to haunt him.”

Dressed in a blue sweatshirt with his hair slicked back, McGuire kept his head bowed as Judge Julian Hall passed sentence.

He said: “It is difficult to imagine a worse breach of trust than to steal money from an elderly person working for a charity, deceiving them, conning them out of money.

“They, out of a sense of Christian goodwill, were working to help people like you who had a rough deal.

“The breach of trust was at a very high level, the money was taken over a period of a year and you kept on doing it.”

He was jailed for eight weeks at Banbury Magistrates’ Court last month for absconding from bail.