A woman has been sentenced to three years in prison for defrauding a former EastEnders actress in a scheme involving a fictitious documentary about Hillary Clinton.
Anne Mulloy, 63, misled her friend Helena Breck by claiming she needed financial support for expenses related to accessing Clinton’s 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
Helena Breck, who appeared in an episode of the BBC soap in 1994 and lent her voice to the popular supermarket checkout phrase “unexpected item in the bagging area,” became a victim of Mulloy’s deceit.
Initially charged with an £85,000 fraud, the amount was later revised to an unspecified sum. At Peterhead Sheriff Court, Sheriff Craig Findlater emphasized that jail time was the only fitting consequence for a prolonged fraud that exploited a friendship for monetary gain.
Speaking to BBC Scotland News, Breck expressed relief that justice had been served. “She has shown no remorse for the trust she abused or the pain she caused,” she stated. “I’ll never recover financially from the damage she inflicted, but I hope others are protected from this callous fraudster while she is imprisoned.”
In EastEnders, Breck portrayed Elizabeth Willmott-Brown, the wife of Kathy Beale’s rapist, James Willmott-Brown, and she also had a recurring role in the 1980s BBC soap Triangle, which took place on a North Sea ferry.
Sustained Fraud
Mulloy was found guilty of fraud committed between 2011 and 2017, during which she repeatedly solicited loans from Breck for expenses she had no intention of repaying. A key part of her deception involved claiming she was producing a documentary on Hillary Clinton, which never existed.
Defence counsel Jordanna Blockley argued that Mulloy faced significant health challenges and suggested a community sentence might be more appropriate. However, Sheriff Findlater noted the extensive nature of the fraud, which involved tens of thousands of pounds and a history of similar offenses.
Given the seriousness of the case and its impact on the victim, the sheriff concluded that only a custodial sentence would suffice.