A lottery winner who defrauded his ailing mum out of £24,000 has been given a 21-month suspended sentence. 

Barry Perryman, 41, won £250,000 with his parents seven years ago, but within months was transferring money from his mum's bank account as she succumbed to dementia.

Perryman, who is a known gambling addict, spent four years syphoning money away from mum Christine's account to fund his addiction, rather than spending it on her care. 

Judge Simon Carr of Plymouth Crown Court handed the fraud a 21-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, alongside a £500 fine and mandatory completion of the probation service's Rehabilitation Activity Requirement supervision programme. 

Before delivering Perryman's sentence, Judge Carr declared: 'You seem to show no empathy for the losses you have caused your mother. 

'The entire report shows you feeling sorry for yourself rather than the victims of your crime.'

The Perryman family won £250,000 on a scratchcard in September 2014, after Barry Perryman bought the ticket from a Londis store and it matched four numbers on a Winning 7s card. 

The family, who played the lottery as a syndicate, had a new home and car on top of their wish list, as well as extra care for dementia-sufferer Christine, but within four months of the big win the defendant was conning his mum out of cash.   

Perryman, whose own barrister said would have gambled away the entire £250,000 had he been allowed access to the money, is now claiming Universal Credit after an injury forced him to stop work. 

The defendant, of Wombwell Crescent, Keyham, had previously admitted defrauding his mother of £24,000 between January 1, 2015 and December 31, 2018 at Plymouth Crown Court last month. 

Judge Carr said the defendant had made an attempt to cut his brother out of his inheritance by trying to remove him from a will after his brother reported the defendant's despicable actions to the authorities.

Handing him a suspended prison sentence, Judge Simon Carr said that Perryman had sought to blame everyone but himself. 

In his final statement before delivering the sentence, Judge Carr said to Perryman: 'You live in a house with your parents bought from the winnings on the National Lottery.

'Your mother sadly deteriorated in her health and by 2019 her dementia was such that there was intervention of the Court of Protection in order to financially manage her affairs.

'It was discovered to the horror of the family that you had been stealing from her.

You used a credit card which had been entrusted to you entirely for your own benefit and for https://barbarellaswinebar.co.uk/ your gambling addiction.  

'What you did was remove more than £26,000 which would have improved her quality of life immeasurably.' 

Judge Carr continued: 'You seem to show no empathy for the losses you have caused your mother.

The entire report shows you feeling sorry for yourself rather than the victims of your crime. 

'The one reason that has kept you out of custody has been the charity of your parents.'

Meanwhile, Perryman's barrister said in reference to his client's gambling addiction: 'The decision by the family to invest that money in a property under his father's name was no doubt done in recognition of what would have happened to that £250,000 if it had gone into a bank account.

'It would have been gone by now.

He would have spent it searching for greater wins.'

Perryman lived with his bus driver father Roy, who also served in the Royal Navy, and his mother at the time of the win, and had a YouTube account dedicated to his love of scratchcards where he posted videos of his gambling for two years leading up to the big win. 

According to his barrister, Perryman was working as a delivery driver up until December last year, before he broke his ankle and suffered an infection which left him in a wheelchair with his leg in a plaster.

Perryman claimed Universal Credit after the injury forced him to stop work, despite having defrauded his mother out of tens of thousands of pounds.