The private school fraudster who tried to steal her former headmistress's £4m fortune with a DIY will - and nearly got away with it
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There are some scams that are so preposterous it is hard to see why anyone would give them a moment's credence. Yet for three years Leigh Voysey, 46, was able to persist in the fiction that her former headmistress Maureen Renny had changed her will to bequeath her the entirety of her vast £4.2 million estate.
![[The fee-paying Hertfordshire school that headmistress Maureen Renny founded and ran until 1998 in her rambling mock Tudor home and where Leigh had once been head girl]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/20/18/93361643-14214779-image-a-13_1734719901824.jpg)
Voysey had once been head girl at the fee-paying Hertfordshire school that Mrs Renny founded and ran until 1998 in her rambling mock Tudor home. Insisting she had been favoured by her teacher, who elevated her to prefect and gave her all the best parts in school plays, Voysey claimed that Mrs Renny decided to leave her everything, disinheriting five relatives in the process.
![[Maureen, the wealthy widow at the centre of the drama, owned properties in London and on the south coast, as well as two in the village of Much Hadham, Hertfordshire]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/20/18/93361655-14214779-image-m-15_1734720013007.jpg)
Earlier this month Voysey, single mum to a ten-year-old daughter, was jailed for six-and-a-half years for fraud and forgery, having finally cracked seven days into her trial at St Albans Crown Court and admitted her improbable story was a tissue of lies.
![[Maureen’s step-grandson Tom, 32, with wife Alexandra, 31. Tom has written a book about his ordeal, and also believes a time limit should be imposed on anyone challenging a will]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/20/18/93361657-14214779-image-a-16_1734720125155.jpg)
Given the will the shelf-stacker had produced was a crude DIY document which Mrs Renny had supposedly approved in 2019 after suffering a stroke and dementia which incapacitated her both physically and mentally, what's perhaps most astonishing is that Voysey was able to maintain her claim for so long.
![[Leigh claimed that her headmistress Maureen decided to leave her everything, disinheriting five relatives in the process]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/20/18/93361661-14214779-image-m-18_1734720241293.jpg)
She was pursuing a civil case against the legitimate heirs and, as Maureen Renny's step-grandson told the Mail this week, there were times when they feared she might actually pull off the hoax. Private tutor Tom Renny, 32, says the toll on them, as legal fees mounted, was huge.
