Email messages expose how crooked journey agent, 39, duped victims into wondering she experienced cancer

A travel agent who faked cancer despatched e-mails to her clients telling them she experienced ‘stage three’ tumours escalating inside her following they raised worries around their holiday scheduling with her. 

Lyne Barlow, 39, defrauded much more than 1,400 customers with her fake cancer story, using her sham health issues to protect from the avalanche of grievances from devastated family members whose holiday seasons unsuccessful to materialise.

The vacation agent, who was jailed at Durham Crown Court docket for 9 several years, acquired sympathetic emails from prospects she tricked into thinking she was gravely sick.

Just after victims began to notify the authorities of Barlow’s holiday getaway scams, there have been so a lot of calls to the law enforcement that they experienced to be directed to an email tackle because crisis callers would have been not able to get as a result of.

In whole Barlow could be verified to have defrauded household, friends and consumers out of £1.2m, but investigators think the full sum she obtained in excess of a period of time of 5 yrs from 2015 to 2020 was £2.6m.

E-mail showed how the dodgy travel agent duped her victims into wondering she was battling cancer.

When a person of her customers asked about her existing scheduling, Barlow wrote back telling them that she experienced stage a few most cancers.

Barlow wrote: ‘Unfortunately I have just found out my cancer has unfold and it’s gone to stage 3/4 it’s in my bones and will need to have chemo set into my spine to end it from getting to my mind.

‘It’s likely to be fairly intensive.’

Just one of the duped victims in excess of Barlow’s most cancers lie responded: ‘I am so sorry to listen to this it really is awful times for you. I will preserve this to myself.’

Yet another target emails Barlow just after not hearing about their vacation scheduling regardless of following up a number of situations.

Barlow tells them that she was not properly sufficient to perform final week and skipped the clients successive email messages that were being anxious about their imminent holiday getaway reserving.

Yet another of Barlow’s worried buyers e-mail to request her how her therapy is likely and to ask about why their flights are but to be transformed. 

In September 2020, anxious consumers started to share their encounters on social media about holidays falling through following booking with the 39-yr-old’s organization.

To cope with the sudden inflow of calls about the holiday break ripoffs, Durham Police directed victims to an e mail tackle for folks to lodge their complaints, then set up a 20-solid workforce of officers to follow up.

They recorded extra than 450 crimes, involving all-around 1,400 victims, and it grew to become a single of Durham Police’s biggest at any time fraud investigations.

Detectives soon determined to arrest and interview the mom-of-two and even as officers went to her residence in Stanley, County Durham, buyers were being knocking on her door to consider to uncover out what had transpired to their bookings, and their funds.

Detective Sergeant Alan Meehan claimed: ‘Victims were being turning up at the house as she was being arrested.

‘Some had been offended and worried, some others have been rather sympathetic to her for the reason that of her expressing she experienced cancer.’

The small business which largely operated on social media experienced spiralled out of control after joyful shoppers shared word of the amazing vacations they had savored at knock-down selling prices – promotions which have been unsustainably inexpensive.

So when people’s bookings fell through, flights experienced not been booked and some had been even left stranded overseas, word distribute equally as rapidly on the web, sparking the deluge of problems to police.

Her operation angered lots of folks who missing out on desire holidays for crucial birthdays, hen dos and even marriage events.

There was an arson attack on her dwelling – the tackle from which she ran her small business – on the evening she was arrested, law enforcement mentioned.

No-just one has been prosecuted for that offence.

Barlow was so established to go on her charade that she even convinced her spouse, Paul, and son and daughter she was battling cancer.

Spouse and children associates took her to healthcare facility appointments, unaware that she was simply waiting around inside of right before re-emerging declaring to have observed her expert.

To make her story much more convincing, she lower off strands of her hair and scattered them across her pillow to make it glance as although she was getting rid of it to chemotherapy.

When Barlow was arrested in 2020 she hobbled into the law enforcement station with her head swathed in a scarf and going for walks with a stick.

Custody photographs display a vast big difference when she was re-arrested a 12 months afterwards and was compelled to acknowledge her ‘stage 3/4’ most cancers had been a fabrication.