A devastated north Cumbria haulage company director has described crying herself to sleep and becoming depressed after her business was targeted by two scheming sisters as part of an audacious £1.2 million fraud.
Joanne Charise Palmer, 40, and her 38-year-old sibling Stephanie Palmer targeted two English firms based 150 miles apart by bombarding unsuspecting staff members with phone calls.
Prosecutor Tim Evans told Carlisle Crown Court the pair did so with “dogged, determined, relentless persistence” during a scam which ran over many months pre-Covid and is said to have involved more sophisticated but unidentified others.
Having initially made speculative cold calls to the north Cumbria family-run haulage firm, the Palmers “smelled panic”, “went into overdrive” and made financial demands of a company secretary/director in respect of non-existent advertising costs to a company secretary.
Faced with chilling threats to her family members, bailiff visits and warnings the business would be “finished”, the woman was conned into parting with £1.2million over many months while scared for the safety of her loved ones.
The Palmer sisters brazenly then changed tack by offering to recoup money, persuading the woman to hand over more. But the pair were caught red-handed after the woman’s daughter was alerted and turned detective. She switched calls to her own phone, pretended to be her mother and made recordings which were transferred to police.
Cash sums were cascading through different bank accounts. Approaching £500,000 in ill-gotten gains were funnelled through those held in the sisters’ names. More cash went into accounts belonging to two other women who assumed more peripheral money laundering roles.
Kelly Shaw, 41, received tens of thousands of pounds while Stephanie Charnock, 43, was involved in the transfer of criminal property in four-figure sums.
Describing the impact, the haulage company director stated: “Each time I paid over money I thought that would be the end of it. It was not. I had no idea how much money I had paid over. The whole thing made me very depressed. I hoped it would stop but it didn’t.”
She added: “I was constantly worried. Every time the telephone rang I thought it would be people ringing me asking for more money. I did in the end stop answering the phone.
“I had sleepless nights just worrying. I would cry myself to sleep at night. Even after the police became involved and began the investigation I was very nervous and afraid of what was going to happen. With time I began to feel better and was a lot more assured of myself.”
The company was getting back to where it was before being defrauded, she said, adding: “But this has taken a lot of hard work.”
Police enquires revealed the Palmer sisters had also trained their sights on a second business based on England’s east coast, which was defrauded in copycat fashion to the tune of almost £70,000.
Phones and paperwork seized after the Palmer sisters’ arrests allowed detectives to painstakingly piece together what had happened and bring them to court.
Joanne Palmer was the criminal “leading light”, the court heard, with her sibling an “enthusiastic participant”. The sisters, both of The Precinct, Romiley, Stockport, had also set up companies as “vehicles” to make the fraud they admitted appear real.
Defence barrister Jane Dagnall, for Joanne Palmer, said her offending was “part of a wider-arching crime”, adding: “There are clearly many others involved, more sophisticated.”
Joanne Palmer and Stephanie Palmer, along with Charnock, of Maplecroft, and Shaw, of Winterburn Green, both Stockport, were due to have been sentenced for their offending on Friday.
But Judge Nicholas Barker said he needed more time to consider the case, including submissions made on behalf of the defendants. He adjourned the case and is due to pass sentence on Wednesday of this week (9th August). In the meantime, all four woman were granted bail.
