Shoplifter made £500k via refunds on stolen goods
A WOMAN made more than £500,000 by shoplifting goods and then returning them for refunds.
Narinder Kaur, 53, also known as Nina Tiara, travelled across the country to con shops including TK Maxx, John Lewis and Debenhams.
The prolific shoplifter made it her “full-time career” to steal from highstreet stores and then dishonestly claim refunds by returning the goods.
The crimes occurred thousands of times between 2015 and 2019.
During police searches of her home, about £150,000 in cash was found as well as stolen goods.
CCTV footage shows Kaur entering stores, taking items from the shelves, and taking them to the tills as if they had been previously purchased.
Kaur was convicted at Gloucester Crown Court of 26 counts on a charge list that included fraud, possessing and transferring criminal property, and perverting the course of justice.
She will be sentenced at a later date. Giovanni D’alessandro, senior prosecutor at 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 under 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.”