A man who allowed his bank account to be used to cash cheques stolen from an elderly Parkinson’s disease sufferer has been jailed.

Charles Reid, of Centaury Place, Blackbird Leys, Oxford, was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday after pleading guilty to two charges of transferring criminal property in January 2008.

The court heard the 43-year-old father-of-seven ‘closed his eyes’ to where the two cheques, which totalled more than £8,000, had come from. Matthew Walsh, prosecuting, said the 70-year-old victim, Eva Flitter, who lived in a residential home, was convinced her daughter had something to do with the money going missing.

The incident had caused their relationship to break down irreparably before her death in 2008. But it was later proved the money had been taken by someone else.

James Reilly, defending, said Reid only benefited to the tune of £1,000 by transferring the money on behalf of a man he knew only as ‘Richard’ and had closed his mind to where the cheques had come from because of the pressing nature of his own poor financial situation.

Judge Patrick Eccles said: “In closing your eyes and mind in what had brought the cheques into being, you closed your eyes as well to the harm that must have been caused to the victim.”

Reid was jailed for seven months.