a{T<\/a> kindly check out our own web-site. It’s going to be pretty intense.’<\/p>\nDetective Sergeant Alan Meehan from Durham Police Complex Fraud Team led the investigation.<\/p>\n
He said: ‘At the time of her arrest we were aware that she was telling people she had cancer and at that time we kept an open mind on whether that was correct or not not.<\/p>\n
‘As part of the investigation we asked to access her medical records and it was only then that the truth emerged that she had been making the whole thing up.<\/p>\n
‘It was a determined and calculated attempt to distract attention from her crimes and deflect blame away from her because she hoped people would feel sorry for her.<\/p>\n
‘The lengths she went to were very unusual.It came as a massive shock to her husband that she did not in fact have cancer.<\/p>\n
‘She wore a scarf over her head and appeared to be losing her hair, although we believe she was cutting off strands and scattering it across her pillow at night to keep up that deception.<\/p>\n
‘Members of her family were even taking her to hospital appointments that never existed.<\/p>\n
When she was first arrested in September 2020 she presented as a very frail and sick woman, walking with a stick and with her head in a black scarf to cover the apparent hair loss.<\/p>\n
‘Once confronted by the medical information she had no option but to admit she’d been lying.<\/p>\n
‘The second custody photograph from when she was re-arrested in 2021 show the true picture, with no sign or suggestion of illness.<\/p>\n
‘In our opinion it’s a serious aggravating factor in the largest case of fraud this force has ever dealt with.<\/p>\n
‘Lyne Barlow was trying to attain a lifestyle she could not afford and rather than stop as she got out of her depth she continued to take money from more and more victims.<\/p>\n
‘The number of calls we received on this case was unprecedented and once they started coming in they were so many that we had to set up a dedicated email as the control room was in danger of being overrun.’<\/p>\n
James Lewis, of the Crown Prosecution Service said: ‘Barlow acted with greed, using false promises and deceptive lies, to convince family and friends, as well as hundreds of customers, who all trusted her, to part with their money so that she could sustain her own lavish lifestyle.<\/p>\n
‘Fraud is an insidious crime and the cost to the many victims in this case has not just been financial; it has also caused huge emotional distress and extreme disappointment to devastated customers who had to find out their holiday did not actually exist at a time when the country was in the grips of the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
‘Thanks to the thorough investigation by Durham Police and to all the victims who came forward to report her, we were able to bring Barlow to justice.<\/p>\n
‘We will now be taking steps to recover this money taken through Proceeds of Crime legislation.’<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A travel agent faked\u00a0 while defrauding more than 1,400 customers has been jailed at Durham Crown Court for nine years. Lyne Barlow, 39, was ‘riding the monster of deceit’ as she used her fake illness to deflect the avalanche of complaints from devastated families whose holidays failed to materialise. She was so determined to continue […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":985,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[280],"tags":[],"dealstore":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/985"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3269"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3270,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269\/revisions\/3270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3269"},{"taxonomy":"dealstore","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gavki.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dealstore?post=3269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}