A Wiltshire woman who conned shops out of £500,000 has been jailed for ten years.
Narinder Kaur, previously known as Nina Tiara, tricked more than 1,000 retailers into refunding her for items that she had never actually purchased.
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 crimes.
Passing sentence for offences of fraud, money laundering and perverting the course of justice, Judge Ian Lawrie KC labelled her as a “thoroughly dishonest individual”.
The prolific shoplifter made a full-time career out of travelling all over the country to steal items from high street stores and then dishonestly claim refunds on those stolen goods.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) proved that Kaur defrauded various retailers over a thousand times between July 2015 and February 2019.
It is estimated Kaur netted around £2,000 worth of refunds per week, equating to over half a million pounds in fraudulent refunds and stolen goods.
While under investigation, she then embarked upon a scheme to defraud other businesses using the dishonestly obtained credit card details of members of the public.
Kaur first came to Wiltshire Police’s attention in 2016 for theft. A joint investigation took place between Wiltshire and West Mercia in August 2020, which saw over a thousand items, suspected to be of criminal property seized from her home near Malmesbury.
Kaur was further 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 made witness statements to the police.
Despite being on court bail, the offences continued and Kaur was arrested in May 2021 for attempting to fraudulently return stolen items to Asda stores in both Melksham and Swindon.
A third search of her home address recovered a further £38,000 in cash, located by a police search dog where it was concealed beneath a water heater.
Kaur was also arrested by Wiltshire Police on several occasions for breaching her court-issued bail by entering stores she had been instructed by the court not to, and failing to adhere to curfew times.
A close examination of her bank and credit card accounts, of which she had very many, showed that she had visited and defrauded Boots stores including those in Cheltenham, Malvern, Solihull, Droitwich, Kidderminster, Dudley and Smethwick.
Over the period between July 2015 and September 2019, she received £60,787.09 in refunds from Boots despite having only spent £5,172.73 with the high street retailer during that same period.
She also received £42,853.65 in refunds from Debenhams despite having only spent £3,681.33 during a four-year period, and she received £33,131.61 in refunds from John Lewis stores in Milton Keynes, Watford, Chester, Cardiff, Chichester, Basingstoke, Nottingham, Newbury, Exeter, Southampton, Reading, Birmingham, Tamworth, and Leicester, having only spent £5,290.36 between August 2015 and December 2018.
She also visited the 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 in payments out to the stores.
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 refunds of £23,147.75.
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 yet she only spent £1,181.45.
In addition, over the same period she defrauded TK Maxx of some £14,563.53. She targeted Homebase between August 2015 and February 2019 and defrauded the company of £3,238.47.
She also attempted 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.
Additionally, she worked with a male accomplice to use stolen bank card details to make payments to her own heating oil supplier.
She also instructed several solicitor’s firms to sue her brother and arranged for an accomplice to make payments in the thousands of pounds using stolen card details which she then asked the solicitors to pay to her.
She also lied to the court and produced false documentation to avoid being convicted of speeding offences and to relax her bail conditions.
During two police searches of her home, around £150,000 in cash was found hidden away as well as stolen goods.
After sentencing, Steve Tristram, a fraud investigator for West Mercia Police, said: “She is, without doubt, the most dishonest person I’ve ever dealt with in 40 years of policing.
“She exposed loopholes in till operating systems. A lot of those, I’m pleased to say, have now been closed. She would very often steal items, claiming that she’d previously purchased them.
“She would then buy additional items, obtain refund receipts, take that to another store and fool the store operator into believing that she’d previously purchased those items.”
Mr Tristram said Turner previously had one or two successful businesses.
He added: “I think what she found was that she could make a lot more money out of retail fraud,” he said.
“It was it was easy for her. She did this so often that she became adept at it. And £2,000 a week is a lot of money.”
Giovanni D’Alessandro, of the CPS, said after sentencing: “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 in a second identity to avoid detection.
“She now righty 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.”
Wiltshire Police Detective Inspector Tom Straker said: “As most of us went to work, Kaur carried out crime as her profession.
“She travelled up and down the country earning a living as a professional shoplifter and a prolific fraudster, and attempted to evade detection by using around 17 alias names.
“In an effort to derail investigations Kaur attempted to intimidate both police staff and public witnesses, but thanks to the determination and professionalism of our officers, and the co-operation of the public, I am pleased that she will be behind bars for some time”.