Woman who threatened RBS chiefs back behind bars

The woman allegedly warned Sir Philip Hampton not to go home this weekend unless she was paid a vast sum of money. Picture: TSPL

Ruby Cooper, 52, bombarded the banking boss with emails and phone calls before getting RBS chief executive officer Ross McEwan and police chief Bernard Hogan-Howe involved.

She also told Sir Philip’s personal assistants that a member of staff was going to be stabbed if she didn’t get her money, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

Cooper warned banking bosses to stop being ‘low-life, thieving scum’ and just to give her the money she believed she was owed.

She was in breach of a restraining order imposed last year after she was found guilty of harrassing former RBS chief executive Stephen Hester in 2012.

‘Flush out’

Cooper had sent two emails threatening to ‘flush out’ Mr Hester and release the address of his children days after sending him a vial of liquid purporting to be poison.

A jury of four men and eight women unanimously convicted Cooper of breaching the restraining order after just four hours deliberation.

Adjourning sentence until July 18, Judge Martin Zeidman said: ‘The sad thing is that this defendant has been in custody for some six months and that is because having made a restraining order, we need to know she wont do it again.

‘All I want to hear is that she won’t do it again but you can see by the previous convictions that she is likely to.

‘I must order a formal psychiatric report while you are in custody though you will remain at the hospital.’

‘This is not justice.’

As she was led away from the dock Cooper turned to the judge and exclaimed: ‘Thanks for putting me in a mental hospital which I will not get out of for the rest of my life.

‘This is not justice.’

She also expressed concern for her two dogs claiming: ‘I need to get out for my dogs, I have two bulldogs.’

Last October Judge Zeidman had imposed a restraining order banning Cooper from contacting any director or former director of RBS.

But just a week later Cooper emailed Sir Philip asking for money and for the 19-year-old matter to be resolved.

She also told Mr McEwan that the company could have a ‘corporate manslaughter’ on their hands if she decided to ‘flip.’

Cooper was told by RBS staff she was in breach of her restraining order and should direct her complaints elsewhere but things came to a head in January when the messages became abusive.

Prosecutor Warwick Tatford said: ‘She was prohibited from contacting any member of staff at RBS.

‘The trouble is she did it again and again and again and suggests she didn’t contact anyone at RBS because she had emailed people from Natwest.

‘But her own emails and phone calls show this is rubbish.

‘In one call to Fiona Macdonald, she will tell you Cooper said “We have been warned and she was going to stab a member of staff if they did not send her the cheque.”

‘In a second call, which may have been hot air, she said “Sir Philip Hampton should not stay in his house this weekend as things will be happening to him.”

‘That is a pretty unpleasant thing to say.’

Police warning

The calls on 17 January prompted RBS staff to call the police having warned Cooper she was in breach of her restraining order.

Cooper also also sent an email to police commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe to try and cover her tracks.

It said: ‘I have been asked now to send all my emails to Ross McEwan by RBS themselves just in case they try and stitch me up.’

In a second email sent to Mr McEwan and Mr Hogan-Howe later on 15 January she said: ‘Your secretaries both tell me that Mr McEwan has taken over my case and to speak to me on the telephone.

‘Please ensure my cheque arrives by 17 January and please do not put me through any more stress as you have destroyed 19 years of my life.

‘You have cost me £2 million but I am willing to accept just £750,000 by next week.

‘If you continue to harass me and I flip and you end up with a corporate manslaughter situation then you will have only Natwest and RBS to blame.’

On January 16 she emailed the bank asking for her cheque to be sent by courier before informing Mr McEwan personally that all the proof he needed to clear the cheque could be found on her website natweststalker.com.

She continued in her email: ‘Stop acting like low-life thieving scum – if you pay yourself such big bonuses then you can pay mine by next week.

‘Do not hold me responsible for retaliation.’

‘Freaked out’

Cooper has spent nearly 20 years campaigning against the bank after being ‘freaked out’ by a member of their staff in the early 1990s.

She said in 1993 a member of NatWest’s call centre staff took her home address from the bank’s computers and paid her repeated visits even after she moved home.

Cooper, who at the time was running a recruitment business, continued to contact the bank about her concerns, and was convicted of harassing former chairman Sir David Rowland in 2000.

She was then banned from contacting any employees of NatWest or RBS, or any police officers involved in her case.

Privately-educated Cooper, who has a degree in psychology and social anthropology from the University of Stirling, worked for NatWest from 1977-78.

Cooper, of (262A) East Barnet Road, Barnet, north London, was convicted of breaching a restraining order.