A "heartless" travel agent who scammed her own mother for £500,000 has been jailed. Lyne Barlow conned holidaymakers out of thousands and even claimed to have terminal cancer as part of her con.
Following the death of her father in 2015, Barlow decided to steal £520,000 from her own mother by taking over her financial identity. She also dissipated her mother's entire NHS pension and redirected her post and bank statements, reports ChronicleLive.
As Barlow drained her mother's wealth, she also asked friends for loans. She often claimed she was being threatened, managing to get thousands from her victims.
At one point, Barlow even tricked her mother into believing she was investing money into her husband's company, and at one point told her she was a millionaire - which she never was. As the money she stole from her mother slowly reduced, Barlow decided to set up her own business as a travel agent, and began defrauding holidaymakers and other friends in a scam which totalled £1.2m.
As a travel agent, she began offering trips to exotic locations such as Dubai, Asia and the Maldives for prices that seemed too good to be true. But the low prices - which were snapped up by customers - were because Barlow was using money which was either her own, borrowed from family or friends, loaned from the bank, or were funds from previous holidays paid for by her victims.
She used new bookings to fund existing holidays, in what was described as a "Ponzi style scheme", and in many cases gave victims holidays which were much shorter than expected and left others stranded in foreign countries without return flights. Hundreds of customers - including her own family members - were left out of pocket.
On Friday, Barlow, formerly of Stanley, County Durham, appeared at Durham Crown Court to be sentenced for 10 charges of fraud, one charge of theft and one charge of concealing, converting, and transferring criminal property. She had pleaded guilty to the charges at a previous hearing.
Prosecutor, Angus McDonald, said following the death of her dad, Barlow began to exploit her own mother - Susan Colman - who had recently retired from the NHS, and took over her financial identity. She then got her statements redirected and began creating false documents when her mother became suspicious she wasn't receiving correspondence and put a complaint in to the financial ombudsman.
Mr McDonald said: "The defendant had used her role to isolate her mum from her finances and produced false documents to stop her raising the alarm. During this, her mum was traumatised by the death of her husband."
In 2018, Barlow's sister found out that the money in her mother's accounts had gone, and raised the alarm. However, Barlow persuaded her mother that was not true.
Mr McDonald said that Barlow had also advised her mother to invest a large sum of money in her husband's company - which she did. Barlow later, falsely, told her mother she was a millionaire due to her investment. After thinking she was a millionaire, her mum decided to pay her other daughter's mortgage off - with the purchase never going through.
The court heard that around this time, Barlow told her family she had cancer - which she had suffered from previously. Mr McDonald said: "She had had cancer in the past, but this latest diagnosis was a lie."
During the Covid pandemic, Barlow limited contact with her mother by telling her she couldn't risk infection due to her cancer diagnosis. The court heard that when Barlow was finally arrested, her mother found out she was thousands of pounds in arrears and that her post had been intercepted by her daughter for five years.
Mr McDonald said her mother had been "plunged into financial difficulties". Barlow had spent the money from her accounts and her NHS pension, worth over £100,000.
The court heard that Barlow would use her mother's money to take them both on lavish holidays - usually coinciding at times when bailiffs would be turning up to see her mother. Ms Colman never knew about these bailiff appointments and was completely unaware of what was going on.
As Barlow drained her mother's money, she then began asking other friends for loans, and stole thousands from them - all the while maintaining the cancer lie. She even took money from the best man at her wedding and other friends. The 39-year-old even took the drastic step of cutting her own hair and leaving it on her bed to further fool family members into thinking her hair was falling out due to her illness.
Food shopping would also be washed on the doorstep to try and minimise the risk of catching Covid-19, which she claimed would not impact on her supposed cancer treatment. The lie got so believable that she even duped her family members into taking her to hospital for fake cancer treatment appointments.
It was then that Barlow, a mother-of-two, decided to set up her own business called Lyne Barlow Independent Travel in November 2019 - she had previously been employed as a travel agent. When running her new company, she quickly gained a reputation for being able to provide holidays at the cheapest price around and she told customers she was ATOL and ABTA protected - which was a lie.
News of her offers quickly spread by word of mouth and on social media. Whenever she was approached by a potential customer about a holiday, she would then use normal websites which are accessed by any member of the public looking for a holiday. She would then make the deal very attractive by offering a discounted rate to her customers.
Other holidaymakers only discovered when they reached the airport to find that despite having flight details, they did not have seats or that the booking had been cancelled because it had not been paid for. Once a holiday had been agreed and payment arrangements made, Barlow would often promise to send booking confirmation details but often failed to send them despite repeated requests by the customer.
She would also give customers bogus information, claiming there were delays from holiday companies and in some cases, customers would even be told she was behind with her bookings due to her treatment for stage 3/4 cancer. The court heard Barlow's offences came to light in September 2020, when numerous victims began bombarding Durham Constabulary with calls. The calls caused such unprecedented demand on police call handlers, complaints had to be directed to an email account which was quickly set up to deal with what was happening.
Due to the number of complaints about Barlow's holiday fraud, Operation Wentletrap was launched and soon turned into one of Durham Constabulary’s biggest ever fraud investigations. Tony Davis, defending, told the court Barlow was now a "broken, beaten, penniless woman".
He added: "She apologises to each and every victim and, of course, there are many. Plainly, what I say on her behalf can't replace the trust that has been destroyed between her and those closest to her...the monster she had created, she was simply unable to control."
Mr Davis added that she carried out "horrendous deceit" and that her "remorse is real". He said that some of the money she stole went towards providing her mother with holidays and said there is no psychiatric defence, but said there may have been bereavement issues following her father's death. He said: "There was a desire to be liked by people, but what she did was take it far too far. It was a blessed relief for her when she was eventually arrested."
Sentencing Barlow to nine years in jail, Judge Jo Kidd said she presented herself as "charming and engaging" but "mercilessly abused the trust of your nearest and dearest". She branded her a "callous individual" and that she had a "rare talent for charm".
