Luxury Lake District hotel fraudster from Manchester jailed

Sonia Malhi admitted a number of offences when she appeared at Carlisle Crown Court

A woman who scammed luxury hotels and restaurants in the Lake District out of £14,000 has been jailed.

Sonia Malhi used stolen receipts to claim refunds at various establishments in Keswick, West Cumbria and Kendal in January 2020.

The 39-year-old fraudster had been part of a similar crime carried out in Cheshire several weeks earlier, Carlisle Crown Court heard.

Malhi, from Manchester, was jailed for 20 months having admitted fraud.

She was arrested in Kendal on 26 January last year when suspicions were raised by businesses she had targeted.

Knuckleduster

Malhi was the "leader of a group" with her accomplices distracting customers while she stole receipts from card terminals and entered their card numbers to pay for rooms at luxury hotels, splash out on champagne and wrongly obtain refunds, prosecutor Tim Evans said.

"This is a sophisticated style of operation that really can be taken off the peg, of Cheshire or Merseyside, and used in Cumbria as it was," Mr Evans told the court.

"She is the one who has brought the methodology from her activities further south."

Malhi, of Hobson Crescent in Audenshaw, admitted two counts of conspiracy to defraud, plus theft and illegal possession of cocaine and a knuckleduster arising out of a shoplifting spree in Cheshire during December 2019.

The court heard she had more than 100 previous offences to her name.