A HEARTLESS care home manager who pocketed thousands of pounds from vulnerable residents and then claimed she had cancer in a bid to cheat justice has been struck off the nursing register.

Michelle Cox, 50, repeatedly raided the safe while based at the Rosedale Care Home at Catterick Garrison, the Nursing and Midwifery Council was told.

Cox was reported to North Yorkshire police and charged with 18 counts of theft and one count of false accounting. But the charges were dropped after she forged a letter from a consultant saying she had terminal cancer.

But she was later convicted of perverting the course of justice at Teesside Crown Court in March and jailed for 12 months after it was revealed the consultant had never heard of her.

Cox, of Glenfield Drive, Middlesbrough, was employed at the care home between January and April 2010 during which time, she was found to have taken more than £3,000. This included money brought in by families for residents and helping herself to residents fees.

She even engineered for the care home's safe to be replaced by tampering with the lock and filling it with super glue, with Cox the only person with a key to the new safe.

During her time at the home she allegedly stole money from at least 15 residents, sometimes up to £200 at a time, also taking £465 from a staff fund and £500 in petty cash.

Dr Jacqueline Mitton, chair of the Nursing and Midwifery Council said: "The panel concluded that Mrs Cox had acted so as to put patients at unwarranted risk of financial harm, brought the profession into disrepute, breached fundamental tenets of the profession, and acted dishonestly.

"Mrs Cox dishonestly took money from the residents, from Rosedale, and from her employer, Maria Mallaband Nursing Homes Ltd and dishonestly falsified one of the resident’s records in an attempt to cover up her taking of the money.

"'This was a course of sustained dishonest conduct taking place over some four months, during which Mrs Cox breached the trust which both the residents and her employers had placed in her. Further, Mrs Cox was convicted for perverting the course of justice by producing false medical records to the Court," she added.

Cox was not present or represented at the central London hearing.