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A callous drug addict who was spared jail after she cheated an elderly man out of £40,000 today had her “too soft” sentence upped by top judges.

Sharon Mincher blackmailed the vulnerable victim , who cannot be named, over a 15-year period, threatening to falsely accuse him of rape if he did not give in to her demands.

The 45-year-old was handed a two-year suspended sentence and a drug treatment requirement at Teesside Crown Court in July, after admitting blackmail and stalking.

But her sentence has now been replaced with a five-year jail term by judges sitting at London’s Appeal Court, who said the original punishment was “unduly lenient”.

The court heard Mincher, who has 184 criminal convictions to her name, targeted the victim after he paid her for sex.

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Over the years, she repeatedly demanded he give her money, or she would tell police he had raped her.

Even when she was behind bars for another crime, she got the victim to send her postal orders for £10 or £20 at a time.

The victim said she had “absolute power” over him and he was scared about what would happen to him if she carried out her threats.

In one particularly spiteful incident, she went to his house three times on the day his father had died.

She made him hand over £130 - completely ignoring his pleas to be left alone because he was grieving.

Things eventually came to a head in July last year, when neighbours saw her shouting through his letterbox and climbing into his garden, and called police.

'Judge placed too much weight on offender’s current efforts'

By the time she was arrested, the victim had a £4,000 credit card debt and was in arrears with rent and utility bills.

Lawyers representing the Attorney General, Jeremy Wright QC, argued she should have been jailed for this prolonged blackmail against a vulnerable victim.

They said the crown court judge gave her too much credit for having cleaned up her act and seeking treatment for her drug addiction by the time she was sentenced.

Locking her up today, Lady Justice Hallett said: “The judge placed too much weight on the offender’s current efforts, which were to her own benefit, to tackle her drug addiction, and too little weight on the seriousness of the offending, its duration and its impact on the victim.

“Given the link between her offending and her addiction, her efforts weren’t irrelevant and we applaud those efforts.

“But they could not possibly justify both a reduction in the sentence and the suspension of it.”

Sitting with Mr Justice Flaux and Mrs Justice Simler, the judge said Mincher, of Dorset Street, Hartlepool , has until noon tomorrow to hand herself in at Hartlepool police station to start her sentence.

Speaking after the hearing, Mr Wright said: “Mincher has a long history of offending, with dozens of previous convictions for more than 180 offences. Her offences in this case took place over a number of years and involved her taking a large amount of money from a vulnerable man.

“Given her history, along with the very serious impact her most recent crimes had on her victim, I did not believe that a suspended sentence was warranted.”