InteleTravel has revealed there were no warning signs to suggest Lyne Barlow was a fraudster when she joined the homeworking group.
Barlow, who was sentenced to nine years in jail at Durham Crown Court, worked briefly as an InteleTravel agent from September 2019 to November 2019.
The sentence followed her guilty plea in October last year to charges of fraud and money laundering totalling in the region of £1.2 million.
According to Durham police, Barlow set up her own business, Lyne Barlow Independent Travel, in November 2019, and gained a reputation for cut-price deals sold via Facebook and Instagram.
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Prior to that, she had worked under the same business name but under InteleTravel’s umbrella.
InteleTravel UK director Tricia Handley-Hughes said there was no evidence of any wrongdoing when the group vetted Barlow’s joining application.
She said: “We vet all our agents before they join but if there is no police record, there is no reason for us to doubt an agent unless something has been flagged; this is half of the problem. She wasn’t known to anyone [as a fraudster]; she wasn’t on anybody’s database.”
She added that the group acted swiftly to terminate Barlow’s membership of InteleTravel when head office was alerted by one of the agent’s customers about the lack of paperwork linked to a booking.
“The first thing we heard was from a customer chasing a booking confirmation and that’s when we discovered the customer had paid around £4,000 for a holiday but never received any paperwork,” said Handley-Hughes.
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Both InteleTravel and the customer tried repeatedly to contact Barlow, to no avail.
Handley-Hughes added: “That alerted us immediately and set alarm bells ringing; we terminated her contract and contacted Action Fraud. We kept chasing and liaised with Durham Police. We have to protect customers first and foremost.”
She said the group had been proactive in finding the relevant police fraud to ensure the case was followed up.
“We kept chasing and finally got referred to Durham police and liaised with them,” she said, adding the group had not been aware of any other frauds by Barlow while at InteleTravel. “The good thing is that Durham police took it on board and started to investigate,” she said.
Abta described the Barlow fraud case as “relatively rare”.
Fraud in the travel industry happens “almost exclusively” online, said a spokesman, who stressed: “Fraud is an issue: these people are out there. Fraudsters are looking for areas where they can make easy money.”
The spokesman said signs of fraudulent agents included unrealistically low prices and unlimited availability, particularly for airline tickets and accommodation-only bookings, such as high end villas.
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