Wiltshire woman who defrauded shops out of £500,000 jailed for ten years

A Wiltshire woman who defrauded shops out of £500,000 has been jailed for ten years.

Narinder Kaur, formerly known as Nina Tiara, tricked more than 1,000 retailers into refunding her for items she never bought.

Following a four-month trial at Gloucester Crown Court, the 54-year-old, of Chosen Hill in Cleverton, near Malmesbury, was found guilty of 26 offences.

Sentencing her for offenses of fraud, money laundering and perverting the course of justice, Judge Ian Lawrie KC labeled her a “thoroughly dishonest individual”.

The prolific shoplifter has made a full-time career of traveling across the country to steal items from high-street shops and then fraudulently claim refunds for those stolen goods.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) proved that Kaur defrauded various retailers more than a thousand times between July 2015 and February 2019.

Kaur is estimated to have obtained refunds worth around £2,000 a week, which equates to over half a million pounds in fraudulent refunds and stolen goods.

While under investigation, she then engaged in a scheme to defraud other businesses using the fraudulently obtained credit card details of members of the public.

Kaur first came to the attention of Wiltshire Police in 2016 for theft. A joint investigation took place between Wiltshire and West Mercia in August 2020 which saw more than a thousand items of suspected criminal property seized from her home near Malmesbury.

Kaur was also arrested in October 2020 by Wiltshire Police when she attempted to fraudulently return items for a refund in Dunelm, St Margaret’s Retail Park, Swindon.

Hundreds of items were seized from her property, again suspected to be criminal property, including more than £113,800 in cash and dozens of gift cards.

During the joint investigation, Kaur was also arrested for witness intimidation when she threatened to sue Dunelm staff if they gave witness statements to the police.

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

A third search of her home address recovered a further £38,000 in cash, located by a police sniffer dog, where it was hidden under a water heater.

Kaur was also arrested by Wiltshire Police on several occasions for breaching her court-issued bail by entering shops which the court ordered her not to do and for failing to observe curfews.

A close examination of his bank and credit card accounts, of which he had many, showed that he visited and defrauded Boots stores, including those in Cheltenham, Malvern, Solihull, Droitwich, Kidderminster, Dudley and Smethwick.

Between July 2015 and September 2019, she received £60,787.09 in refunds from Boots, despite spending just £5,172.73 with the major retailer over the same period.

He also received £42,853.65 in refunds from Debenhams, despite spending just £3,681.33 over a four-year period, and received £33,131.61 in refunds from John Lewis stores from Milton Keynes, Watford, Chester, Cardiff, Chichester, Basingstoke, Nottingham, Newbury. , Exeter, Southampton, Reading, Birmingham, Tamworth and Leicester after spending just £5,290.36 between August 2015 and December 2018.

She also visited Monsoon stores in Telford, Shrewsbury, Milton Keynes, Maidenhead, Cardiff, Watford, Trowbridge, Reading, Bridgend, Yeovil and other locations where she claimed £23,000 more in refunds than payments to the shops.

Between January and July 2018, Kaur also targeted House of Fraser stores in Bristol, Cardiff, Cwmbran, Bath, Reading, Cheltenham, Birmingham, Swindon, Solihull, Worcester, Exeter and other locations where she spent £2,853.55 and claimed repayments of £23,147.

Between 2018 and early 2019 she defrauded Homesense stores in Bristol, Stafford, Chichester, Taunton, Winchester, Salisbury, Shrewsbury, Oxford, Cannock, Solihull, Cardiff, Worcester, Farnborough, Maidenhead and Swindon of £19,540.17 but spent just £181,414. .

In addition, during the same period she defrauded TK Maxx of approximately £14,563.53. She targeted Homebase between August 2015 and February 2019 and defrauded the company of £3,238.47.

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

In addition, she worked with a male accomplice to use the stolen bank card details to make payments to her own heating oil supplier.

She also instructed several law firms to sue her brother and arranged for an accomplice to make thousands of pounds in payments using the stolen card details, which she then asked the lawyers to pay her.

She also lied to the court and presented false documents to avoid being convicted of speeding offenses and to relax her bail conditions.

During two police raids at her home, around £150,000 in cash and stolen goods were found hidden.

After the sentencing, Steve Tristram, a fraud investigator at West Mercia Police, said: “She is without a doubt the most dishonest person I have ever dealt with in 40 years of policing.

“It exposed loopholes in operating systems. I am pleased to say that many of these have now been closed. He often stole items, pretending he had bought them previously.

“She would then purchase additional items, obtain refund receipts, take them to another store and trick the store operator into thinking she had previously purchased those items.”

Mr Tristram said Turner had previously had one or two successful businesses.

He added: “I think what he discovered was that he could make a lot more money from retail fraud,” he said.

“It was easy for her. She did this so often that she became an expert at it. And £2,000 a week is a lot of money.”

Giovanni D’Alessandro, of the CPS, said after the sentencing: “Narinder Kaur committed fraud on a long and wide scale.

“It was a very lucrative full-time job which was shown to have earned him over half a million pounds during this offending period.

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

“He also changed his legal name and opened new bank accounts and credit cards under a second identity to avoid detection.

“She now faces a significant sentence for her crimes and the prosecution will seek to recover as much of her ill-gotten gains as the law allows.”

Wiltshire Police Detective Inspector Tom Straker 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 tried to evade detection using around 17 aliases.

“In an effort to derail the investigations, Kaur attempted to intimidate both police staff and public witnesses, but thanks to the determination and professionalism of our officers and the cooperation of the public, I am pleased that she will be behind bars for some time. “.