Dover loan agent Anita Bartosova caught after applying for loan to PFS
Published: 00:01, 16 June 2014
Fraudster agent Anita Bartosova thought she had got away with swindling more than £4,400 from her pay day loan bosses.
The 29-year-old single mum-of-one had lost her job with the company after submitting 22 bogus claims for loans.
But two years later she made the error of applying for a loan herself... to the same company!
Provident Financial Services spotted the address on the application...and instead of a cheque arriving at the door of her home it was the police.
Now Bartosova, of London Road, Dover has admitted 22 fraud charges and received a nine-month jail sentence suspended for 12 months.
Prosecutor Jim Harvey told Canterbury Crown Court how the Czech-born mother began working for the PFS as a loan agent in 2010.
“In 2011 the manager at the Dover branch had to verify some of the new loan application forms she had submitted.
“There had been significant problems, some of the addresses on the forms were in correct as were some of the telephone numbers.”
Mr Harvey said that a resident in Wood Street in Dover also contacted the company because of demands for a loan he hadn’t taken out.
“An internal investigator was brought in who established that between February 8 and March 18 2011 the defendant had made 22 loan applications which appeared to be false.
“She was interviewed and said the loans were genuine, claiming she had met people in a car park in Dover – in breach of company rules.
“It became apparent later that all of the 22 applications were made out with false details and resulted in £4,435 in short-term high-interest loans being paid out, “ he added.
Mr Harvey added: “By then she had gone off the radar and was not spoken to by police because the company didn’t know where she was.
“She only came to light when in 2013 she made an application to PFS for a loan. She was interviewed and claimed the applications were genuine and she had been catering for people from the Czech community.
“She said after submitting the applications she was given the cheque
which she cashed and then passed on the money to the applicants.”
Niall Doherty, defending said Bartosova now suffers from MS and chronic depression.
He said she had come to the UK 15 years ago and claimed she had been made to carry out the frauds by a lover who has since left her.
“She is petrified that she will go into custody and won’t see her child for some time. Because of her condition she is also petrified she would come out of prison in a wheelchair.
“I ask for the utmost leniency.”
Judge Heather Norton told her: “You took money for which you were not entitled. I am told you did what you did at the instigation of your ex-partner.
“But there would have been opportunities for you to have brought it to the attention of the authorities.
"Now because of your present circumstances there is no chance of the money being returned.”
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