'Thoroughly dishonest and stupid': Beauty salon fraudster jailed AGAIN for lying to judge during trial
A beauty salon owner jailed for fraud has been told to spend even more time behind bars - for lying to the judge during the trial.
Tina Patel claimed she had repaid £6,000 in rent arrears to her landlady in Walsall and produced a receipt to Wolverhampton Crown Court.
However, Judge Nicholas Webb became suspicious and ordered an investigation, as well as jailing Patel for a total of 42 months for fraud.
Police inquiries revealed that the purported signatory, Mrs Carol Aulton, was "flabbergasted" when shown the forged receipt - she had not received a penny, Stafford Crown Court heard.
Patel, aged 38, formerly of Waterfront Way, Walsall has now admitted a new charge of perjury and was jailed for ten months. The court heard she is currently serving the jail term for fraud and is not due to be released until January next year.
During that trial last year Wolverhampton Crown Court heard Patel, who owned Creative Salons in Park Place, tricked wholesalers by sending emails purporting to be from bank officials confirming transfer payments.
On one occasion she forged a banker's draft – whitening out the original payee's details and inserting her own – before emailing a scan of the cheque to a Derbyshire-based firm to convince them to despatch her shipment.
And she repeatedly wrote cheques from closed bank accounts to cover monthly payments on a rented property in Boulevard Walk, Birchills, amassing arrears of £7,500 before eventually being evicted.
Jailing her for the new offence of perjury at Stafford Crown Court, Recorder Mr Christopher Goodchild told her: "What a sad way to spend your life. You are thoroughly dishonest and you are stupid enough, in front of a judge well-skilled in matters of fraud, you try to trick him. You may have been desperate, but it was such an obvious trick. It was also perjury."
Mr Gary Cook, prosecuting, said Patel took out a tenancy in Boulevard Walk, Walsall and paid the first month's rent to Mrs Aulton, but paid nothing more and by the time she left owed a total of £7,500.
At Wolverhampton crown court, Patel admitted fraud, but claimed in a trial of issue she had repaid Mrs Aulton £6,000 - and produced the forged receipt.
"What it amounted to was a deliberate attempt to mislead the court with false evidence and a false receipt," said Mr Cook.
Mr Gurdeep Garcha, defending, said Patel had received "a substantial sentence" for the fraud. "What she said was very foolish, it was a crude attempt to mislead the court, but it failed miserably because the judge saw through it."
Investigating officer Dc Launa Rowley from the Economic Crime Unit, said: "Patel tried downplaying the scam throughout: she initially claimed the bounced cheques were innocent mistakes, not calculated attempts to steal large quantities of beauty products, and that she'd settled her rent arrears.
"However, I was in court alongside Patel's landlady when her defence team produced the receipt…she told me she'd not written it and that her signature must have been forged.
"A handwriting expert concluded that the receipt was a fake and Patel begrudgingly admitted writing it herself. She is a habitual liar and has rightly been punished for trying to pull the wool over the judge's eyes."
