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Margaret Hood.jpg
An evil con-artist who was convicted of falsely claiming she had cancer to get cash from her victims is back telling the same old lies.
And the Sunday World can reveal heartless scammer Margaret ‘Beth’ Hood is like a ‘fox in a henhouse’ after it emerged she’s living in a fold in west Belfast full of vulnerable elderly people.
Hood hit the headlines when the Sunday World revealed the heart-breaking story of how she conned a west Belfast family whose father was dying of terminal cancer.
The caring Tomans were taken in by Hood’s claims that she too was dying of cancer and even took her into their home and gave her money to visit a fictitious cancer specialist in the US.
The stone-hearted fraudster would ‘coincidentally’ bump into the family at a cancer centre in Belfast where their beloved dad and husband Frankie Toman was receiving treatment. She even wore fake bandages claiming she had just had blood taken.
She escaped jail – along with her accomplice lover Henry Fenton – despite being convicted of defrauding the Toman family and she vanished for almost two years.
But the sick fraudster has – like a bad penny– turned up again in Belfast and she’s back to her old tricks again.
We received a call from concerned residents of Forthriver Fold which is in the Glencairn area at the top of the Shankill.
They had seen a recent ITV documentary about Hood and were shocked to see what she had done to the Toman family.
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VICTIMS: The Tomans
They say she’s been telling people she’s riddled with cancer and has been living in the Fold since April 2013.
She even asked several residents to break the law by taking her penalty points after she was caught speeding on the Springfield Road – as she would lose her licence.
Yesterday the Sunday World tried to confront Hood at the Fold but she refused to open her door.
But residents want to know how someone with her record
was accepted as a suitable tenant into a fold and ultimately they just want her out.
One frightened resident who Hood befriended told us how residents were living in fear of having Hood in living in their midst.
“She has taken everyone in with her lies about her hard life and everyone thought she was really nice,” said the fold resident who didn’t want to be identified.
“I was going on holiday with her until I fell ill. Then I saw the programme about her and I couldn’t believe it – it was a real shock.
“I found it so upsetting when I saw what she had done to that family whose dad was dying of cancer. I had told her about my nephew dying when he was just 11-year-old of cancer.
“It was just after that she told me she had cancer of the face and that it was embedded right into the bone.
“I’m not so worried about myself but there are vulnerable residents living here with Alzheimer’s disease and if she asked them for money I’m sure she could talk her way into getting it.
“We feel so vulnerable with her living with us. She has already conned one resident out of almost £500 because she said she need to see a consultant about her cancer.”
Another resident said they had gone to Helm Housing who run the Fold to see how she had got in but they said there was nothing they could do as she hadn’t broken any rules of the fold.
“She started being really nice and friendly and was baking things for our coffee morning every Friday,” said the resident.
“All my family thought she was the loveliest person – she was so plausible. She has told at least five or six people that she has cancer.”
Sally Somerville regularly visits the Forthriver Fold to see her friends and she says she was completely taken in by Hood and ended up going on a luxury holiday with her.
“She comes across so timid and she told me all about how she was married to Henry Fenton for 17 years and that he had taken half her money in the divorce,” Sally told us yesterday.
“We went to Tunisia a few weeks ago. She spent a fortune on handbag and shows and jewellery – money was no problem for her. Now I can only wonder who she scammed it off.
“When I saw the documentary and I couldn’t believe it. I nursed my own father when he was dying of cancer and I have to be honest if she’d done to my family what she did to the Tomans then I’d have slit her throat.”
Throughout the court process Fenton and Hood had heaped misery on the Toman family by denying their actions and on occasion led a campaign of intimidation against their victims.
Hood walked away with an 18 month suspended sentence after convincing a judge she suffered from a rare mental disorder while Fenton claimed if he went to jail there would be nobody to look after his sick mum.
The Sunday World followed the story of the Tomans which began almost five years ago after they came to our office to tell us the police weren’t taking their claims seriously.
We have spoken to a raft of victims who were scammed over the last three decades.
Originally from Ballymena professional con artist Hood stitched up her second husband Gerry McToal.
He told the Sunday World how he gave her money for cancer treatments in 1991 before she walked out leaving him with thousands of pounds of unpaid debts.
steven.moore@sundayworld.com