Jail for conwoman who operated on 'industrial scale' - earning £500k in refund scam
Watch Rob Murphy's full report on serial shoplifter Narinder Kaur
A conwoman who used a refund scam to defraud high street stores out of £500,000 has been jailed for 10 years.
Narinder Kaur, who lives near Chippenham, stole more than half a million pounds worth of cash and goods in a refund scam over four years, Gloucester Crown Court heard.
She defrauded high street shops over a thousand times - stealing from stores in Barnstaple, Cardiff, Chesterfield, Derby, Reading, Swansea, Swindon, Torquay, Warrington, Weymouth, Winchester and Wolverhampton.
Kaur was convicted of 26 counts including fraud and perverting the course of justice.
Investigators say the scammer, who also used the name Nina Tiara, made more than £2,000 a week in her con.
Gloucester Crown Court heard she made it her "career" to travel the country, steal goods and demand refunds for items that she was not entitled to.
"She is, without doubt, the most dishonest person I've ever dealt with in 40 years of policing," said Steve Tristram, a fraud investigator for West Mercia Police.
"She exposed loopholes in till operating systems. A lot of those, I'm pleased to say, have now been closed.
"She would very often steal items, claiming that she'd previously purchased them.
"She would then buy additional items, obtain refund receipts, take that to another store and fool the the store operator into believing that she'd previously purchased those items."
Despite her denials, a jury at Gloucester Crown Court convicted Kaur of 26 crimes including fraud, possessing and transferring criminal property and perverting the course of justice.
Gareth Weetman, prosecuting, said: “This defendant made it a full-time and lucrative endeavour.
“This was inherently sophisticated offending with sustained planning, carried out over a five-year period with a large number of victims.”
The court heard that in a four year period she targeted high street stores. These included:
Boots - she spent £5,172.73 and obtained refunds worth £60,787.09
Debenhams - she spent £3,681.33 and obtained refunds worth £42,853.65
John Lewis - she spent £5,290.36 and obtained refunds worth £33,131.61
House of Fraser - she spent £2,853.55 and obtained refunds worth £23,147.75
Homesense - she spent £1,181.45 and obtained refunds: £19,540.17
Judge Ian Lawrie KC, the Recorder of Gloucester, imposed a total sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment for crimes that were “stubbornly persistent and on a near-Olympian scale”.
“You indulged in a veritable tsunami of dishonesty and deceit on a varied assortment of victims,” he said.
“The majority of that dishonesty and deceit was carried out over a significant range of retail outlets covering an extensive geographical area from north to south, Warrington to Plymouth, and from east to west, London Colney to Swansea.
“There seems to have been no limit to your offending, all of which was conducted with resolute persistence, unburdened by restraint or inhibition.
“The scale of the offending was on a near-industrial scale. The overall value of the offending has been valued at £500,000.
“The collective scale and gravity of these offences means the court is left with no alternative option but to impose a significant term of custody.”
Mr Tristram said Turner previously had one or two successful businesses.
"I think what she found was that she could make a lot more money out of retail fraud," he said.
"It was it was easy for her. She did this so often that she she became adept at it. And £2,000 a week is a lot of money."
When police searched Kaur's home in the hamlet of Cleverton, near Malmesbury, they found more than £150,000 in cash.
Kaur had been on the police's radar for some time before West Mercia Police's Fraud Team began a nationwide investigation into her finances.
They watched hundreds of hours of CCTV footage from shops which showed the conwoman taking items from the shelves, placing them in a trolley before heading to the tills where she demanded a refund.
Giovanni D’Alessandro of the CPS West Midlands said: “Narinder Kaur undertook fraud on a long standing and wide-ranging manner.
"It was a very lucrative full-time job which demonstrably made her over half a million pounds over this period of offending.
"She went to extraordinary lengths to carry out her deceptions, seeking to find a way of defrauding a retailer and then travelling all over the country to replicate the fraud.
"She also changed her name legally and opened new bank accounts and credit cards in a second identity to avoid detection.
"She now righty faces a significant sentence for her crimes and the prosecution will look to recoup as many of her ill-gotten gains as the law allows."