A GRAPHIC designer who plundered his dead mother’s pension fund to help keep his business afloat was spared prison.

For more than six years after his mother’s death, Alfred Menzies, 65, continued to withdraw the cash from her pension pot.

Between January, 2001, and February, 2007, the father-of-two stole £29,291 from the TRW Pension Scheme.

Liverpool Crown Court heard in 2006 he even filled in a certification form from the company claiming to be his mother, Ivy, so he would still receive the monthly payments.

Joanne Maxwell, prosecuting, told how Menzies, of the Crescent, Southport, even fraudulently filled in the form with details of a bogus witness. Judge Brian Lewis said: “This was deliberate, persistent dishonesty.”

But the judge suspended a 50-week prison sentence for two years, after hearing Menzies was a hard-working family man who had used the money to pay for his daughters’ university education and to pay off business debts.

He ordered Menzies, who admitted theft and using a false instrument, to do 200 hours’ unpaid work in the community.