A millionaire's daughter was duped into driving looters around during last year's riots by "a man with two faces", a court has heard.
Laura Johnson, 20, had no idea she was about to become involved in the looting which took place in London last year when her friend Emmanuel Okubote, known as T-Man, asked her to take him his car charger, according to defence lawyer Martin McCarthy.
When she arrived in Catford, south east London, on the evening of August 8, Okubote and three other men wearing hooded tops, bandanas and balaclavas got into the back of her car and ordered her to drive them around as they robbed and looted people at knifepoint, Inner London Crown Court was told.
McCarthy said that Johnson could not have known what was going to happen as 20-year-old Okubote had not shown her the other side of his personality.
He said the Okubote that Johnson knew was a man who was charming and had listened to her when she told him about her mental health problems.
Johnson knew right from wrong and although she had harmed herself in the months leading up to the incident, she would never have set out to harm others and it would not have affected her moral compass, the barrister told the court.
Johnson, from Orpington, south east London, denies three counts of burglary and three alternative counts of handling stolen goods.
A 17-year-old defendant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admits one count of burglary but denies two further counts of burglary or handling stolen goods.
McCarthy told the court that although intelligent and well-educated, Johnson was fragile, suffering mental health difficulties and susceptible to exploitation by others.
He said: "Although she may well have been vulnerable, is it likely that she would have been drawn into this world by August?
"Had she been turned almost overnight into this looting, thieving girl who wanted for excitement to be amongst this group of people?"
McCarthy said Okubote was a man that people did not say no to and that when he said jump, people jumped.
He said: "T-Man had a presence amongst men and a presence amongst women.
"A charmer with women; a man who had an ability to make women feel wanted or special. He was perhaps a listener, someone who women would be drawn to and feel able to discuss things with because that's what he wanted to achieve.
"Amongst men he was the boss of men. He was a man who was capable of having others of his group and character accept his instructions almost without quarrel, and if quarrel came it did not last very long.
"He was someone who at the right time was able to exhibit violence and threats."
McCarthy said Okubote was a man with two faces who could turn into whoever he needed to be, no matter who he was with.
He said: "He was somebody who was keeping company and drawing women into his world for his obvious own purpose."
Over the months that Johnson got to know Okubote, it suited him to display the other side of his character for those he wanted to draw in, the barrister said.
He told the court he was unlikely to have presented himself to Johnson as a violent man who could turn at the flick of a switch.
McCarthy told the court that Johnson's admission that she had been raped by two men shortly before the riots had not been deployed to gain sympathy.
He said: "You can have confidence that she confided in exactly the wrong person because that trust was repaid in a way that was not deserved."
The barrister added that all Okubote's text messages to Johnson in the days leading up to the looting had been flirtatious, but that messages he had sent to other people made it clear that he was planning to rob and loot.
McCarthy added: "She was not in on it. She was being duped. She was being drawn into an incident that this man was planning, and that he was bringing her into for his own purposes.
"There is not a single shred of support for the idea that Laura Johnson knew what was going to happen that night before she arrived."