A rogue travel agent who defrauded 1,400 holidaymakers and pretended to have terminal cancer to deflect complaints has been jailed for nine years.
Durham crown court heard how the scale of Lyne Barlow’s fraud, which also involved stealing the financial identity of her mother and borrowing money from neighbours and friends that was not paid back, had been estimated at £1.2m.
Jailing the 39-year-old on Friday, the judge Joanne Kidd said Barlow had “an extraordinary talent for dishonesty” and was a “thoroughly callous individual”.
Kidd pointed to Barlow’s fraud against her own mother shortly after the mother was widowed. “You mercilessly abused the trust of your nearest and dearest in their darkest hours. You set about targeting other vulnerable people of your acquaintance and who trusted you to satisfy your need for a relatively lavish lifestyle,” the judge said.
Durham constabulary said it was one of the biggest fraud investigations it had ever undertaken. Many of Barlow’s victims never went on the holidays they paid for, while some others were stranded overseas.
Barlow’s relatives thought she had cancer, with family members duped into taking her to hospital for fake appointments. She sometimes cut her own hair and left it on the bed to suggest she was losing it, police said.
Food shopping had to be washed on her doorstep during the pandemic to minimise the risk of Covid, so as not to affect her treatment. She told people she was in excruciating pain, was incontinent and having palliative care, the court heard.
She set up as an independent travel agent in 2019 and quickly gained a reputation as being able to provide holidays for the cheapest prices. But Barlow, formerly of Stanley, County Durham, was only using websites to which anyone had access to. She would offer a discounted rate and fund the discrepancy using money that was either her own, borrowed or loaned.
Barlow used new bookings to fund existing holidays in what was described as a Ponzi-style scheme. At first, dozens of people went on holidays and left five-star reviews, which meant the business seemed to be booming.
But customers discovered their return flight had not been paid for, leaving them stranded. Some thought they were staying for longer than had been paid for, meaning they had to pay more money.
The holidays were sometimes hen dos, golfing trips, weddings or for milestone birthdays. The destinations included Dubai, Thailand, Turkey and the US. Barlow would often promise to send booking confirmations but failed to do so. Customers would ask questions but not push it because they thought Barlow had cancer, the court heard.
Barlow reassured one affected customer by email that all was in hand, but then said: “Unfortunately I’ve just found out my cancer has spread and it’s gone to stage 3/4 it’s in my bones and need to have chemo put into spine to stop it getting to my brain.”
As Barlow got into deeper financial problems, she turned to family, friends and sometimes to almost complete strangers, asking for temporary loans that were not paid back. The court on Friday heard victim impact statements in which people talked about now being on anxiety medication, sleepless nights, feeling embarrassed and having trouble trusting people.
Tony Davis, defending, said Barlow was a “broken, beaten, penniless woman” who apologised to every victim – “and of course there are many”.
There was no psychiatric defence. He said Barlow had undergone 80 hours of counselling and no root cause had been identified for her crimes. The holiday fraud was an enterprise always “doomed to failure”.
DS Alan Meehan described Barlow as “callous” and her actions as “appalling”, adding that her husband was “very surprised and shocked” when told she did not have cancer.
When police went to arrest Barlow at her then home address, there were two groups of disgruntled customers there. “Some were angry and concerned,” Meehan said. “Others were relatively sympathetic towards her, saying she had cancer.”
Barlow was wearing a headscarf and appeared frail. Once at the police station, it became clear her medical records had no cancer diagnosis. Meehan said: “It is a pretty callous approach to facilitating the fraud. It became apparent that she was using the cancer as an excuse to delay answering people’s queries.”
There were points at which she could have stopped, he said. “Sadly, so many people have been affected by what she did, lives have been changed for ever and some will never be the same again.”
Barlow last year admitted theft from her mother, 10 counts of fraud and a money laundering charge. The losses have been estimated at £1.2m, although the money she had coming in totalled an estimated £2.6m.
James Lewis, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said steps would be taken to recover money through the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.
