Telford Facebook fraudster warned to be honest about payments or go back to jail
A fraudster who together with her sister swindled Tesco out of more than £90,000 has been told she could return to prison if she is not honest about what she can pay back.
Ann Ngyuen, 32, and sister Kim Walton, 34, from Telford, were jailed in August last year for conspiracy to defraud for their joint con on Facebook.
They ran a page called ‘Kims cheap days out’, which advertised tickets for days out at attractions including Alton Towers, Legoland and Thorpe Park.
But what those who bought the tickets received were in fact Tesco booster tickets that could be cashed in for an entrance ticket.
At their sentencing at Shrewsbury Crown Court it was heard that the page, which advertised days out to various attractions as well as family railcards and £5 cinema tickets, had almost 4,000 likes.
Ngyuen and Walton have both since been released from prison.
For her part in the fraud, Ngyuen was responsible for a loss to Tesco of around £35,000.
She sold 1,056 tickets but made an overall loss. Walton, who was responsible for a loss of more than £57,000 to the supermarket chain, sold 1,936 tickets, pulling in more than £22,000.
However, she only made a profit of £4,200 after paying an unidentified person who hacked into Tesco customer accounts.
Walton only had to pay £10 back, and a decision was due to be made on Ngyuen’s means at a proceeds of crime hearing on Friday.
But Shrewsbury Crown Court heard she had not been co-operating with authorities, and she was warned that she must prove to the court what funds she had available.
Prosecutor John Oates said that she had provided “a few scraps of paper” saying that she owed money to people, but nothing that constituted hard evidence.
He added: “It looks like she might be playing games.”
Judge Jonathan Gosling warned Ngyuen that if she did not provide proof she could not pay – and then failed to pay the full amount – she would “have to go to prison”.
The case was adjourned until November 1.
