A woman who used her step-grandmother’s bank card to rack up more than £12,000-worth of spending online will now have to pay back a fraction of that sum in compensation.

A judge at Oxford Crown Court ordered Emily Ellwood to pay the full sum in compensation when he spared the 37-year-old an immediate jail sentence in March.

The sum would be paid off at £25-a-month, meaning it would take around 40 years to pay back.

On Tuesday (September 19), judges at the Court of Appeal in London’s Royal Courts of Justice slashed the amount Ellwood must pay in compensation from £12,261 to £900.

READ MORE: Fraudster fleeced step-gran out of thousands of pounds

Giving the court’s judgment, Mrs Justice Cockerill cited case law that ‘excessive’ or ‘unpayable’ compensation figures should be avoided.

She noted that the judge dealing with the case in March was not taken to the case law, and said it was ‘entirely understandable’ he had erred in law.

Earlier, the court heard that there was nothing mum-of-three Ellwood, who is not currently working, could sell to raise funds and compensate her step-grandmother.

Dana Bilan, representing the Wantage woman at the Court of Appeal on Tuesday, went through various expensive items that had been bought fraudulently.

A pair of Apple watches were either scratched or faulty, a set of Apple AirPod headphones were engraved, a buggy was not in a saleable condition, the court heard.

Told of the impossibility of raising cash by selling off property, one of the appeal judges replied: “All that money spent, so little to show for it.”

Earlier this year, heard that Ellwood’s nine-month online spending spree from April to December 2019 had decimated her step-grandmother’s savings.

Her victim was suffering from dementia and, as a consequence of the fraud, her house had to be sold to cover care home fees.

In an impact statement read to the court, the victim’s daughter said Ellwood had ‘driven a wedge’ between the three family members who had powers of attorney over the woman’s affairs.

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The defendant had ‘completely betrayed’ her victim’s trust and had taken advantage of the generosity she had shown her step-granddaughter over the years, she said.

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Sentencing her to two years’ imprisonment suspended for two years, Recorder John Bate-Williams said: “You dishonestly used account details initially given to you for authorised purposes to milk money from a bank account held by your step grandmother.

“This would have been a serious criminal offence in any event, but of course what makes it particularly serious is the fact [the victim] was suffering from dementia.

“You were trusted by her and members of her family. You betrayed the trust by stealing very large amounts of her savings.”