A GAMBLING addict was jailed for five years yesterday for robbing a woman who cared for her as a child of £500,000.

Theresa Bragg, 43, from Middlesbrough, tracked down widow Anita Fowell, who had been her housemother in a children's home run by nuns.

Divorcee Bragg told Mrs Fowell that she had been left a fortune in a businessman's will, but that she needed money to pay lawyers because his former wife was contesting it.

Mrs Fowell, who looked after Bragg and her eight brothers and sisters in the 1970s at Nazareth House, in Middlesbrough, was delighted for her.

Over the next three-and-a-half years, Bragg deceived her into parting with £501,936.

She also took £50,000 from a family friend. She has none of the money left.

Chester Crown Court was told that by March 2003, Mrs Fowell had used up most of her fortune and had sold her house.

Judge Roger Dutton told Bragg: "Your criminal conduct over this period amounts to one of the most despicable, mean and heartless series of offences that I have ever come across.

"You played the playboy lifestyle, the casino and one-armed bandit queen lifestyle, and a large amount of Mrs Fowell's money went in slot machines and the rest went on eight continental holidays for you and your friends and was frittered away."

Bragg of Harford Street, Middlesbrough, was jailed for five years after she admitted six charges of obtaining property by deception between 2000 and last year.

Adrian Dent, for Bragg, said: "It is accepted that these offences were extremely mean, heartless and that they must have visited and continue to visit misery on Mrs Fowell and her family."