A PART-TIME cleaner has been jailed for 18 months after stealing £28,500 in cash from a house she was working in.

Deborah Wilson, 43, also took Viagra pills and a designer handbag from the home in Orestan Lane, Effingham, in September last year.

She was convicted of one count of theft following a trial at Guildford Crown Court in October.

Her son, Shaun Collins, was also found guilty of handling a total of £2,530 of the stolen cash.

He was handed an 18-month community order with a requirement to complete 140 hours of unpaid work, after both reappeared at the court for sentencing on Friday.

During the trial, jurors heard the victim, businessman Peter Alderson, had been saving up for a classic car for more than a decade.

“You were given as part of the trust in you the key to the house [and] you were allowed to visit the house for the purposes of cleaning,” Recorder Brian Lett QC said to Wilson.

“You abused that trust and I have to regard that as serious.”

However, he told Collins, of Eastwick Road, Bookham, that he took into account his previous good character.

“I do take the view that what you did, you did for the benefit of your mother,” Recorder Lett added.

Police chase

Prosecutors said Wilson, of Middlemead Road, Bookham, was the only person outside of the family entrusted with a key by Mr Alderson.

The money was stored in two briefcases inside a wardrobe in the master bedroom.

Mr Alderson, who admitted during the trial that he was a “money hoarder and money saver”, said he and his wife returned home one day to see clothes strewn all over the bed.

He had gone out to Redhill to view an American Cadillac.

Further loose cash, a new Chanel handbag and some Viagra pills were also missing from the scene, the court heard.

Police who went to Wilson’s home the following day found £665 in a car.

A further £2,440 in cash was found on Collins after he was chased by officers, together with a bag containing £90 and £30 in a wallet.

The trial heard Wilson intended to use that money to pay off the drug debts of her other son.

Ray Barnett, defending, said his client was in some considerable debt to the tune of £20,000 after the collapse of her own cleaning business.

“The theft was clearly a breach of trust,” he said. “However it is fair to say that she is a woman of 43 with no previous convictions.

“She has had considerable difficulties in her past and her present.

“She has struggled with alcohol dependency, depression and financial problems, all of which would overwhelmed her.”

Wilson will serve half her sentence before being released on licence.