Wiltshire serial conman and thief who made more than £500,000 convicted | Crime

A woman who made more than half a million pounds traveling around England and Wales stealing from shops and then claiming back the stolen goods has been jailed for 10 years.

Narinder Kaur, 54, raided more than 1,000 high street shops over a four-year period. When police raided his home in a Wiltshire village, they found £150,000 in cash as well as stolen property which he has yet to return.

Passing sentence at Gloucester crown court on Tuesday, Judge Lawrie said Kaur was a “completely dishonest individual” and described her operation as fraud on an “Olympic scale”.

Kaur, who also worked under 17 aliases, was found guilty of 26 counts of fraud, money laundering and perverting the course of justice.

Police said Kaur, from Cleverton, near Malmesbury, traveled extensively to steal from well-known shops and then fraudulently demanded refunds for the items she had taken. Between July 2015 and September 2019, he is estimated to have made thousands of refunds a week, the equivalent of more than half a million pounds.

Steve Tristram, a fraud investigator from West Mercia Police’s economic crime unit, said: “Kaur is a calculating individual who committed crimes across the country by fraudulently claiming refunds for items she had stolen. He showed no remorse.

“She is without a doubt the most dishonest person I have ever dealt with in 40 years of policing.”

Kaur visited stores such as Boots, House of Fraser, Monsoon and Homebase in cities including Cardiff, Oxford, Winchester, Exeter and Bath.

She also tried to defraud Wiltshire Council of £7,400 by overpaying using stolen credit cards and then contacting the authority for a refund, claiming she had accidentally made a payment with too many zeros.

Tristram said Turner ran successful businesses, but “I think what he discovered was that he could make a lot more money from retail fraud.”

Kaur first came to the attention of Wiltshire Police in 2016 for theft. A joint investigation took place between Wiltshire and West Mercia forces in August 2020.

She carried on despite knowing she was being investigated, and in October 2020 was arrested when she attempted to fraudulently return items for a refund at a shopping park in Swindon.

Despite being on bail, the offending continued and Kaur was arrested in May 2021 for attempting to return stolen items to Asda stores in Melksham and Swindon.

Giovanni D’Alessandro, a senior prosecutor from Crown Prosecution Service West Midlands, said: “It was a very lucrative full-time job which was shown to have netted him over half a million pounds during this period of offending .

“She went to extraordinary lengths to carry out her deceptions, seeking to find a way to defraud a trader and then traveling across the country to replicate the fraud.”

DI Tom Straker of Wiltshire Police said: “As most of us went to work, Kaur committed murder as a profession. She traveled up and down the country, making a living as a professional thief and prolific fraudster, and attempted to evade detection using approximately 17 aliases.”