A woman who made more than half a million pounds by shoplifting across England and Wales and then claiming refunds for the stolen goods has been sentenced to ten years in prison.
Narinder Kaur, 54, conducted over 1,000 raids on high-street retailers over a four-year period. When police searched her home in a Wiltshire village, they discovered £150,000 in cash and stolen goods that she had failed to return.
Judge Lawrie, passing sentence at Gloucester Crown Court on Tuesday, branded Kaur as a "thoroughly dishonest individual" and her scheme as "Olympic scale fraud".
Kaur, who also used 17 names, was found guilty on 26 charges of fraud, money laundering, and perverting the course of justice.
Police said Kaur, from Cleverton near Malmesbury, traveled extensively to steal from well-known establishments and then fraudulently claimed refunds on the items she stole. Between July 2015 and September 2019, it is estimated she received thousands of returns per week, totaling more than half a million pounds.
Steve Tristram, a fraud investigator from West Mercia police's economic crime branch, said: "Kaur is a sophisticated individual who perpetrated offenses throughout the UK, dishonestly claiming.
"She is, without doubt, the most dishonest person I've ever dealt with in 40 years of policing."
Kaur visited Boots, House of Fraser, Monsoon, and Homebase stores in Cardiff, Oxford, Winchester, Exeter, and Bath.
She also attempted to defraud Wiltshire Council of £7,400 by overpaying using stolen credit cards and then phoning the authority for a refund, stating she had made an incorrect payment with too many zeros.
Tristram stated that Turner had operated profitable businesses, but "I think what she found was that she could make a lot more money out of retail fraud".
Kaur first came to the Wiltshire police's attention in 2016 for theft. The Wiltshire and West Mercia forces conducted a combined inquiry in August.DI Tom Straker of Wiltshire police 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.”
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