A TRUSTED son who stole £15,000 from his ill father to spend on drugs and alcohol has been ordered to do 290 hours of unpaid work for the community.

Jamie Troy plundered the vulnerable man’s bank accounts leaving him with just £867 left of his savings, Bradford Crown Court heard today.

Troy was told by Judge Jonathan Rose that his behaviour had been “disgusting, reprehensible and shameful.”

“This is going to live with you for the rest of your days,” he said.

Troy, 34, pleaded guilty to stealing the money over a period of about a year while living with his father at his address in Lymington Drive, Holme Wood, Bradford.

When the money ran out, he said he was going for a walk and returned to the flat he had kept on in Penrith, the court was told.

Prosecutor Allan Armbrister said: “This is a sad case because he stole from his father when his father trusted him and was vulnerable.”

Troy moved in with his father in 2018 to care for him after he had suffered a stroke. He had access to his bank account and Post Office savings account and paid all the household bills from them.

When Mr Troy senior noticed the money was missing, the police were alerted.

There was nothing left in the Post Office account and only £867 in the bank account.

Mr Armbrister said Troy’s father could not believe it, saying: “He’s my son so I trusted him.”

“£15,000 is a tremendous amount of money to this man,” Mr Armbrister added.

The court heard that Troy was a cannabis and cocaine user and spent £100 at a time of the stolen money on drugs.

Gerald Hendron said in mitigation that Troy was full of remorse and deeply ashamed.

He was his father’s carer for 14 months and had only three respite days during that time.

Troy had worked hard as a joiner and was the father of two children.

He made full admissions to the police and pleaded guilty at the first opportunity.

He was keen to engage with the restorative justice scheme to tell his father how sorry he was.

Judge Rose sentenced Troy to the 290 hours of unpaid work as part of a ten-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, with a rehabilitation activity order.

“I’d like to give you a thousand hours,” he told him.

He accepted that Troy had put his heavy drinking and drug use behind him and that he was full of remorse.