An Indian-origin woman suspected of engaging in widespread shoplifting and tricking retailers into issuing refunds for products she never actually purchased was found guilty by a British court, according to the prosecution.
The UK Crown Prosecution Service found Narinder Kaur, aka Nina Tiara, 53, guilty of all 26 charges contained in the indictment. These accusations included obstructing the course of justice as well as fraud, possession, and transfer of illicit assets. Her four-month trial at Gloucester Crown Court came to a close last week.
Kaur was described as a “prolific serial shoplifter” by the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS provided proof during the trial that Kaur had made it her full-time job to traverse the country robbing well-known retailers of their goods. Then, even though she was not entitled to them, she would regularly make false refund claims for these purchases.
After searching her home, the police discovered 1,50,000 pounds and numerous items that had been taken. The CPS demonstrated in court that Kaur had defrauded many retailers more than a thousand times between July 2015 and February 2019.
Senior Crown Prosecutor at CPS West Midlands Giovanni D’Alessandro stated that Narinder Kaur engaged in “a long-standing and wide-ranging manner.”
He claimed, “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.”
Kaur even officially changed her name in order to open new credit cards and bank accounts and avoid being caught. “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,” said D’Alessandro.
Kaur provided the court with numerous false pieces of evidence, the CPS continued, and she also lied to obstruct justice. She provided fake documents to avoid being found guilty, but the CPS piece by piece exposed Kaur’s lies.
Kaur had multiple bank and credit card accounts, and a detailed analysis revealed that she had cheated by visiting high street retailers and fraudulently claiming thousands of pounds in refunds, far in excess of what she had actually paid for things there.
She also tried to steal 7,400 pounds from Wiltshire Council, the local authorities for the Cleverton region in south-west England, by overspending with stolen credit cards and then approaching the council for a refund, stating she had made a mistaken payment with too many zeros.
The CPS claims that she conspired with a male accomplice to pay her own heating oil supplier using stolen bank card details.
She allegedly instructed multiple solicitor firms to sue her brother and arranged for an accomplice to pay thousands of pounds using stolen card details, which she then urged the solicitors to transfer to her.
In order to escape being found guilty of speeding offences and to have her release conditions eased, she also lied to the court and presented false papers, the court was informed.
The CPS claimed that, in collaboration with the police, it was able to establish the case using financial information, retail records, witness testimony, and CCTV that demonstrated Kaur’s pattern of offence.
She was observed by security cameras entering shops, grabbing products from the shelf, and bringing them to the registers as though they had already been purchased. Her accounts were closely examined to validate the pattern of purchases and refunds as well as the fact that the same procedure witnessed on the CCTV was repeated hundreds of times.
Her final act of criminal behaviour was to fabricate information during court proceedings in an effort to deceive the judge and influence the verdict. The CPS said that every false statement she made to the courts was disproved piece by piece in order to expose her perversion of justice.
