An Indian-origin lady was sentenced to 10 years in jail by a court docket in southwest England on Tuesday after being discovered responsible of defrauding retailers and different companies of hundreds of kilos.
Narinder Kaur, also referred to as Nina Tiara, 54, was beforehand discovered responsible of 26 counts of fraud, cash laundering and perverting the course of justice in March 2023.
Prosecutors claimed she had shoplifted on an industrial scale and tricked shops into giving her a reimbursement for objects she had by no means truly purchased. She was sentenced at Gloucestershire Crown Court docket for stealing from greater than 1,000 shops throughout the UK.
“At the moment’s sentencing sends a transparent message that West Mercia Police will deal critically with prolific fraudsters,” mentioned Steve Tristram, fraud investigator for West Mercia Police’s Financial Crime Unit.
“Kaur is a calculated one that dedicated crimes throughout the nation, dishonestly claiming the return of the objects she had stolen. She confirmed no regret for her actions and even thought she would get away with submitting false paperwork to the court docket with the intention of perverting the course of justice,” he mentioned.
The police pressure took over duty for the investigation into Kaur in 2018 and labored with the UK’s Nationwide Enterprise Crime Resolution, an organisation representing retailers and different police forces as a “multi-agency method”.
“We have been capable of additional examine her legal exercise and located fraudulent exercise in her financial institution accounts, which subsequently introduced her to justice,” Tristram added.
Kaur was discovered to have travelled extensively throughout the nation to steal from well-known shops after which dishonestly claimed refunds for these objects.
Between July 2015 and September 2019, Kaur is estimated to have acquired round £2,000 in refunds per week, equating to greater than half 1,000,000 kilos in fraudulent refunds and stolen items.
Figuring out she was being investigated for these crimes, she is claimed to have launched into a scheme to defraud different companies utilizing dishonestly obtained bank card information from members of the general public.
In March 2023, she was discovered responsible of fraud, possession and switch of legal property and perverting the course of justice at Gloucester Crown Court docket.
On the time, the West Midlands Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) mentioned that by working with police they have been ready to make use of monetary information, retail information, witness proof and CCTV which demonstrated Kaur’s sample of offending.
CCTV footage confirmed her coming into shops, taking objects off cabinets and bringing them to the tills as if that they had already been bought. A detailed examination of her accounts confirmed the sample of purchases and refunds and that the identical course of seen on CCTV was being repeated lots of of occasions.