An 'irritating and arrogant' accountant who left a 94-year-old widow destitute in a care home after swindling her out of £183,000 has been jailed for over three years.

Paul Willis, 51, was awarded power of attorney over the estate of family friend Margaret Nunn, Bristol Crown Court heard.

While she was in the Winscombe Hall care home, Winscombe, Somerset, Willis spent her money on designer clothes, family holidays and paying off debt. He even charged her £18,000 in accountancy fees.

When she died in 2008, she even left him £10,000 in her will, but Willis' actions were uncovered when he informed the pensioner's adopted daughter Valerie Bedecker in South Africa that there was no inheritance.

When challenged by police he told them: 'I'm entitled to expect a certain standard of living.'

Willis, of Old Banwell Road in Locking, Weston-super-Mare, pleaded guilty to theft in breach of trust from May 2003 to December 2009.

Judge Michael Roach told Willis' barrister: 'Let's not beat about the bush. This is very obviously a prison sentence.'

The judge told a sobbing Willis: 'You stole, over a protracted period, £183,000 from the assets of an elderly lady for whom you were an accountant and executor of her estate, and for whom you had been granted power of attorney. She was a vulnerable woman.

'I find that you had stolen from her to the point at which in the last days of her life she was destitute.'

The judge set a hearing under the Proceeds of Crime act on December 19, to confirm Willis' ill-gotten gains and confiscate available assets, thisissomerset reports.

Richard Shepherd, prosecuting, said the fully qualified accountant had worked for a major accountancy firm before moving to the West Country and running his own accountancy business.

He said: 'He was highly trained. He was a trusted individual, a senior accountant responsible for junior accountants.'

The court heard that Mrs Nunn's death coincided with her running out of money.

Shepherd told the court: 'Thousands and thousands and thousands was spent on high living while Margaret Nunn's account was being bled dry'.

Giles Nelson, defending, said his client came across as 'irritating and arrogant', but added that the court was not there to 'sentence his character'.

He was sentenced to 38 months in jail.