A thieving bank employee targeted vulnerable customers - stealing nearly £50,000 from their accounts.

Disgraced Bronwyn Brown - who worked at Barclays' Maidstone and Larkfield branches - cynically preyed on a couple who were deaf and mute, a widower who had lost his wife and a sufferer of paranoid schizophrenia.

And a judge has heard how she tried to cover up her pilfering by secretly stopping bank statements from being sent to the victims.

When one grieving victim came to the branch to report the death of his wife - the "essential banker" comforted him - but within minutes began looting the account.

The judge said it was the "most cynical and callous" of the frauds which had begun in October 2017 and continued until she was caught two-and-a-half years later.

Prosecutor Stacey-Lee Holland told Maidstone Crown Court how she stole £38,910 from one victim, £1,500 from another and £7,959 from a third.

She was caught by a colleague transferring cash from one account.

But the sneaky cashier then went to another workstation and completed the fraud and then carried on stealing.

When the 34-year-old was caught she claimed she had been abused by a lover and PTSD was one of the causes - but admitted she took the cash "to make herself feel better".

She would say later: "I felt I could die at any point so I am just going to set fire to my life."

Her barrister, Vittoria Trigilio, said that "was the cause of her involvement in utterly vile criminality."

But her thieving continued even after her ex Connal McPhillips - who previously admitted assault and controlling behaviour - died.

Recorder Edward Butler jailed Brown, of Upper Fant Road, Maidstone, for 27 months.

He told a weeping Brown, who admitted three fraud charges, she had targeted vulnerable customers, lied to investigators and initially tried to blame her victims.