A prolific shoplifter who made more than half a million pounds after tricking stores into handing over refunds for items she never bought has been convicted.
Narinder Kaur, also known as Nina Tiara, ‘shoplifted on an industrial scale’ across the country.
The 53-year-old from Wiltshire ‘made it her full-time career’ to pinch items from high street shops before fraudulently claiming refunds she was not entitled to.
She defrauded a string of shops more than 1,000 times during her four-year plot, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
Kaur was seen on CCTV entering stores, removing items from shelves and taking them to the till and pretending she had bought them previously. Examination of her accounts proved she was doing this hundreds of times, the CPS added.
Prosecutors were able to prove Kaur was behind the scheme after gathering financial data, retail records, witness evidence and CCTV footage.
Kaur, of Cleverton, Wiltshire, was convicted by jurors of
She was convicted on March 10 following a four-month trial at Gloucester Crown Court.
The offences took place between July 2015 and February 2019. Prosecutors said Kaur had a number of bank and credit card accounts.
Now the fraudster faces jail time for her scheme.
Giovanni D’Alessandro, Senior Crown Prosecutor at CPS West Midlands, said: ‘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 rightly 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.’