A carer and her boyfriend have been jailed after they pleaded guilty to stealing from vulnerable people in their own homes in the Radcliffe and Bury areas.
Kaia Smart aged 25 of Victoria Street, Radcliffe was jailed for five years and Corey Bools aged 23 of Barnes Close, Farnworth, was sentenced to four years and six months in prison.
The pair pleaded guilty to 14 counts of burglary after being arrested following Operation Bellflower was an investigation into a spate of burglary offences which occurred between August 2018 and October 2018, where vulnerable people were targeted in their own homes in the Bury and Radcliffe areas.
All of the victims lived alone, and required daily assistance from carers. In all of the burglaries, there were no signs of forced entry and it was suspected that keys from the key safes outside the properties were being used to gain access.
An investigation was launched and officers soon identified the perpetrators. Kaia Smart was a senior carer and had access to the codes for all of the clients’ key safes in the area.
Working alongside her boyfriend, Corey Bools, the pair used the keys from the key safes to enter the homes of vulnerable people, some of who were bed-bound, in the early hours of the morning. Once inside they took cash, jewellery and cheques.
As a security measure the key safe codes were subsequently changed, but the spate of burglaries continued almost daily and without the correct codes, the pair resorted to forcing open the key safes.
Smart and Bools were arrested and during the course of house searches officers found stolen jewellery and a list of addresses with the corresponding key safe codes.
Detective Constable Mark Robertson, of GMP’s Bury borough, said: “It takes a certain amount of wickedness to target the elderly and vulnerable, and Smart and Bools are nothing short of depraved for carrying out these deplorable crimes.
“The victims were left shaken and terrified following the burglaries, and many of them were left feeling unsafe in their own homes.
“I hope that today’s result is of some comfort for the victims, and that it shows our commitment to tackling this sort of crime to make our communities safer.”
