Original subtitles

[Claire] She sounded really genuine.

She sounded like a lovely, friendly travel agent.

Really cheap, good deals.

But if it sounds too good to be true,

it normally is too good to be true.

I have been to this house before

when I confronted Lyne Barlow.

I felt very anxious, very depressed,

sad that she had done this to me.

And I just wanted answers.

Emotions were just all over the place.

[Gavin Havery] This was a really big complex fraud case.

In 20 years as a local reporter,

I have never come across a fraud case like this.

Everybody was a victim, they were. She tricked everybody.

The police were saying this is a massive scale.

Hundreds of people have been conned.

It could be up to about 800,000 pound.

For somebody to deceive people in such a cold hearted and callous way,

people that she knew, people who trusted her.

There's a lot of anger understandably towards her.

This whole trail of events has made me think about,

what did I really know about her?

And how true was anything?

My name is Louise Frost. I live in a town called Stanley

which is in County Durham.

[Gavin] Stanley's a former mining town.

It's not the most affluent of areas.

People don't have lots of money to throw around.

[Louise] It's quite a large town with lots of little villages.

Generally, the people in Stanley are born and bred there.

People tend to stick together.

It's a friendly town.

And it's quite close knit. People seem to each other.

They know each other's business.

My name's Paul Stocks.

I'm married to me wife, Elizabeth Stocks.

We've been married 17 years.

I live in Chester-le-Street, which is five miles from Durham city center.

We work hard and we like our holidays.

My name's Claire.

This is Alex, my partner.

We live in Newcastle and it's a nice area, where we live.

Friendly neighbors. It's a friendly street.

We've got a daughter Grace who's seven,

and Frazer, who's just turned three.

I live in a small village on a newish estate.

which is where I met my best friend who introduced me to Lyne.

When I first met Lyne, I thought she was pretty quiet.

She was always well presented and appeared to be a good mum.

Looked after her children well.

Um, seemed to have a happy marriage.

The word on the street was that she had money.

She had a nice house that was mortgage free.

Um, her husband had a good job.

She didn't work, was a stay at home mother.

Would see each other socially, obviously.

I would be invited to her house,

and parties, and get togethers and vice-versa.

She came to Portugal for me 40th birthday.

I went to some of her events.

Within the social circle, she was pretty quiet,

you know, she wasn't the one that was center of attention,

even when it was like her house and her parties.

She wasn't the, you know, "look at me, it's all about me,"

and didn't really brag about what she was doing.

Generally, everything she had, like,

designer handbags,

clothes of a nicer nature, rather than, like,

your supermarket shopping.

But nothing over the top.

She wasn't dripping in diamonds or anything like that.

I heard that Lyne was going to do some sort of

travel agency course.

She started selling holidays at really cheap prices.

And people that I knew had gotten really good deals.

Like I said, everybody knows everybody,

so it was like, "Oh, have you heard of this lass who's selling holidays?"

And, "have you heard what a great deal it is?"

It was a big buzz and everybody was talking about it,

and everybody wanted to book with her.

Friends were telling us about the couple of holidays that they've had

with Lyne Barlow.

It was a couple of hiccups, but for the price of it,

it's a really good holiday.

I heard the name Lyne Barlow through friends who had booked a Center Parcs holiday.

They were told about it, saying that they were going for new year

and the price of it, then we thought, "Oh, yeah,

why can't I go on a holiday like that?"

Cheap.

Few of us got a big friendship group of

being away for new year.

And some of our friends often go to Center Parcs

and always rant and rave how good it is.

Lyne offered a good deal which was obviously excellent

'cause you can pay that just in school holidays, never mind at new year.

I think it was about 26 in total, adults and children.

All agreed and said, "Yeah, let's go. That's fab. Let's book it."

So I text Lyne Barlow for a few holiday suggestions.

And some of the holidays was coming back and I just couldn't believe it.

So I asked her how it's so cheap, and she just kept saying,

"I'm ATOL protected and ABTA protected.

And because I'm independent, I can cut out the middle man."

[Louise] She had a Facebook page, erm, which promoted all of the holidays.

Was some really good reviews on there.

We thought it was cheap,

erm, because she didn't have the overhead like the big companies have,

so we thought nothing was wrong, you know.

We just thought it was straight forward.

So the general consensus was, it was all fabulous,

you know, five star holidays.

You know, no holds barred, like, everything...

everything included.

Sometimes even private taxis.

Couldn't believe that they got such a bargain.

We did think, well, that is cheap,

but we knew of other people going on holidays,

so you had no reason to...

to doubt what she were selling you because

she was an honest, erm, nice person.

We all decided that we needed two weeks away

'cause we was working hard. Four of our friends work for the NHS.

So they really needed a break 'cause they were working all the way through COVID.

So I text Lyne Barlow and she came up with this offer.

It was 14 days in a suite, in Turkiye.

And it's the Antalya region in a place called Belek.

It was in a five star hotel, all inclusive.

When I priced it up myself, 'cause I like to price up all me holidays,

my price was 3,600. So it looked like a really good deal.

We go on one holiday a year with our friends.

So there's nine of us.

We decided to do the Norfolk Broads

'cause it was something we've always wanted to do.

When we asked Lyne, she come up with some really good deals.

She helped us choose which stops to go,

where the nice restaurants were,

and nice pubs, dog friendly.

So she'd give us all this information,

so she had done her research.

Everybody was traveling down at different times

due to work, due to other commitments.

So the plan was, everybody would just arrive at Center Parcs.

Some of us had never been to Center Parcs before,

so it was part of a Christmas present.

So we cut back on some Christmas presents

because that was part of the present.

So, it was a pretty big deal.

The car was packed up.

I remember I was sitting on the bottom of the stairs,

putting my shoes on and my friend who'd made the booking,

they'd left earlier and got there,

rang and said, "You're not gonna believe this.

There's no booking for us at Center Parcs."

It thought it was a little bit of a joke

until I heard the tone of her voice.

It's definitely not a joke. It's serious.

[Louise] A couple had already got there, they'd left earlier,

and got there and said, "There's no booking for us at Center Parcs."

We were like, "Really? This can't be true."

So my friend then got on the phone with Lyne

and she was very apologetic and you know,

we'll get this sorted. We'll get this sorted.

The first reaction would've been

that this was a genuine mistake.

They would've felt a connection to Lyne.

They would've trusted her to a degree because of her friendship through Louise.

So I'm sure they would've assumed that it was

an honest mistake or perhaps even incompetence

rather than something more sinister.

So she assured us she would...

she would get us in.

So, off we go.

Get about an hour, hour and a half down the road,

and obviously, lots of messages,

lots of phone calls between the groups that were all going.

And it just wasn't looking hopeful,

that we were gonna get to Center Parcs.

We eventually managed to all meet up in a random pub

and as you imagine, the atmosphere was a little bit tense.

Some of the group that didn't really know Lyne were

calling her and saying she was a fake.

Because I knew Lyne personally,

I was sticking up for her and saying, you know,

she's not like that. She wouldn't do this to us.

She wouldn't take our money.

There's gotta be some explanation.

So Lyne then went on to explain that

she had made the booking, but somebody she fell out with

has cancelled the bookings.

[Sohom] This must've been a bit of a conflict for Louise.

She must've been torn because,

obviously, she wants to support her own friends

that were going on holiday, but at the same time,

she felt quite close to Lyne. She knew her.

They had the same friends in common.

So we turned around and we just said, "Look, let's just find

a travel lodge, a Premier Inn.

Lyne agreed if I found something,

she would pay and she promised us

faithfully that she would find us somewhere to stay the next day.

So new year's eve, we would have somewhere

to stay us all together.

Checked into a Premier Inn, obviously made the most of it

and then, she got in touch with um, with my friend

who was the main organizer and said,

"Oh, look, I found something that will sleep yous all."

She didn't want any more money off us.

Lyne was happy to pay for our night in the Premier Inn.

She was happy to pay the extra money for this new farm.

So I was feeling a little sorry for her,

thinking, "Oh, she's gonna be out of pocket here."

And all this running around and, you know, stress on her behalf.

So, in the morning, we drove off to this farm.

It was just like a scout hut.

On a working dairy farm.

The toilets were in a bit of a porter cabin outside.

So we went in. It was just all open plan, like,

about ten sets of bunk beds either side.

There was no privacy.

The guy who ran the farm helped us unpack the bags out of the car.

And we asked him where the hot tub is,

and he just sort of laughed and said, you know,

there's not a hot tub.

At this point, we were just like,

this is rubbish.

But let's make the most of it.

So new year's eve was very different from

what we expected in Center Parcs,

watching fireworks, drinking champagne, prosecco.

There was no firework, but the very friendly

guy on the farm offered if we wanted to milk the cows.

So on new year's eve, we were milking cows.

Lyne Barlow got in touch.

And says, the only flights we can get you is from Manchester.

She said, "Can you please come up to my house

'cause I've not got time to send you the tickets out."

And she said she would email the boarding passes for coming back home.

The location of the flights being changed during the pandemic,

they'd probably thought that it was a bit odd that they weren't informed,

but at this point, there's no reason to suspect fraud.

[Paul] So I said to my friend Garreth,

go up to the house and collect the tickets.

But let her know that we are not happy.

When he got there, he was a bit taken aback.

She had a bandana on her head

and she looked really ill.

And she was telling Garreth, "I'm going through an illness."

When Garreth made arrangements

to go to Lyne's house to confront her,

he must've been quite riled up.

He was ready for a confrontation

and then, suddenly, he's blindsided by

seeing a woman who looks really unwell.

[Paul] Garreth didn't wanna be too harsh on her.

So he picked the tickets and she said please have a good holiday

and she apologized for what happened.

And I said to Garreth, look, things happen.

Let's just enjoy the holiday.

It seems like she's extremely vulnerable and fragile.

So I'm sure he would've been quite conflicted at that point.

It would've deflated the anger and tension that he was,

that he had inside him.

So we landed at Antalya airport,

so we picked our luggage up and we was waiting for our transfers.

And we thought we'd be on quite a big coach.

There was our names on a plaque

and there was an executive bus there

just for us six.

We arrived at the five star Titanic Deluxe hotel.

And we were walked in.

The hotel is absolutely amazing.

We went up to the room and it was an executive suite,

and the suite was absolutely massive.

And the swimming pool is just absolutely to die for.

I actually remember saying to Garreth and going,

this is like you found someone who's doing these travel holidays

and we're getting the best deals you can get.

[Claire] The holiday was mainly for my son's first birthday

and we thought the Norfolk Broads would be

a great way to celebrate.

When we woke up on the morning,

we packed the car, woke the children up,

one didn't know what was happening,

the other was really excited.

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Every five minutes.

So it was roughly about a five hour journey.

Then when we arrived, we parked the car,

we had a little walk around.

We showed our children the boats,

took a few photographs.

Went into the office where you'd check in.

They looked and they said, "No, we haven't got a booking for your name."

So we come out of the office, said, "What do we do?"

Rang Lyne Barlow.

She was so apologetic.

She couldn't believe what had actually happened.

And she said, "Give me five minutes. I'll ring the office."

Phoned us back, says no, there's been a duplicate booking.

"Duplicate booking?" I thought.

She's gotta be able to sort something out for it.

But, you see, it was the height of summer.

[Claire] We were all in bits. We all got really upset.

It's our family holiday.

She says, "Listen, leave it with me.

I've booked you into a house

in Norfolk, five minutes down the road for one night.

And I promise tomorrow morning I'll get you a barge."

So we traveled all the way to the house,

living out of the car for one night,

nine of us, bearing in mind. Two dogs, one baby.

Lyne's modus operandi is quite unusual.

She doesn't just take the money and run like most fraudsters would do.

She tries to correct mistakes with little scenarios,

almost gaining more confidence

from her victims and making her appear like the victim.

So that they end up feeling sorry for her.

So this is a huge occasion.

From Claire and Alex's perspective,

it's probably quite confusing knowing what's going on

because she's in communication with them,

she's engaging with them.

It does seem that potentially some of her actions

might indicate fraud, but at the same time,

she's trying to fix things as well.

[producer] Is that how you were feeling?

[Claire] Yeah.

[producer] Tell me how were you feeling at this point.

I was very upset thinking that our holiday had been

duplicated, double booked, but I had all faith in Lyne,

as an independent travel agent,

finding us another holiday.

Spoke with Lyne the next morning.

She said, "Bad news. Can't get nothing for you in Norfolk.

Travel to York. There's a barge place down there.

I'll try and get you there."

So we traveled to York and everything went downhill.

So we traveled to York, ended up four hours back north

after traveling five to six hours south.

Gets to York, went inside it.

Living room, you couldn't fit nine people in there.

Erm, was like a student accommodation,

somewhere you'd go for, uh, put your head down on a night out.

I broke down in tears and I said, "Not staying here."

And she just kept giving us, erm,

excuses saying she was poorly.

She had cancer. She was in and out of hospital

getting her chemo.

Took about an hour.

By this time, we had decided.

Home.

We're going... we're going home.

Erm, so we all got in the cars really upset.

We actually went to our friend's house.

We spoke to Lyne on the way home.

And Lyne said, "Yeah, I agree.

Go back to your friend's house.

Order a meal, I'll pay for it."

Sent bottles of wine, champagne, blah-de-blah.

For Claire and Alex, it must be a bit confusing

and a bit unsettling.

We see a pattern of Lyne trying to make her victims

feel sorry for her.

She apologizes for what happened,

she buys them cheap meals, she buys them wine,

but we cannot forget what Lyne actually did.

Lyne sent Claire and Alex and their friends, and their children

on a 500 mile wild goose chase knowing full well that

they didn't have the barge and they were about to enter a nightmare.

Lyne knew exactly what she was doing all along.

[Claire] So, day three of our holiday,

Lyne offered us the South Causey

which is in Stanley townfield.

So Lyne set up, given there four, I think it was five nights.

[Sohom] She moved them onto the other hotels.

Maybe she knew that if she corrected these mistakes now,

her victims would have more trust in her,

so she could extract more money out of them in the long term.

But it was only about 20 minutes from our home.

But we didn't wanna go home.

We wanted to be on holiday.

So we decided to just stop there.

Tried to make the best of the worst thing, you know.

The holiday, it was like a five hour drive down there,

four hours back.

Then another two hours, a drive back to Newcastle.

In total it was something like ten hours driving.

Twelve hours driving in total.

It feels like Claire and Alex are being sent on this

wild goose chase.

There's this catalog of errors and I'm sure the frustration and tension must've been

escalating, just building up.

[Claire] Living out of a car with two children,

one being a baby, two adults and then the other family of five

was absolutely horrendous.

[Claire] Right, we're gonna go knock on Lyne Barlow's door

to get this sorted.

Do we go, do we not, knowing she had cancer, she was poorly.

It's interesting that some victims want to

confront their perpetrator.

They want that opportunity to look them in the eye,

explain their anger and their frustration and get a response.

[Claire] I knocked on the door of Lyne Barlow's address.

Lyne invited us in to her house.

I looked at Lyne closely.

And when I was speaking to her,

I was looking her in the eyes 'cause I thought, you know, a liar.

Sometimes you can tell they're lying by looking. They look guilty.

So I looked in her eyes, noticed that she had hair

growing back in her eye brows, she obviously had shaved them off.

Then I looked at her head and she had a bandana on

and I seen a strand of hair as long as mine

coming down one side, and it was dark.

Erm, and then I looked at her arms

and I could see the hairs growing back so clearly.

She had shaved her arms.

And I believe I noticed a plaster on her arm as well.

I didn't believe her at all.

This is the moment that Claire finds out that Lyne has been lying to her.

She claims to have cancer and she's trying to get even more pity

from the victims she's already defrauding.

So this really indicates a high level of manipulation.

[Louise] So, wake up on the first of January,

feel quite deflated.

and I just... I couldn't.

I couldn't spend another night.

I will always remember the conversation I had

with my husband on the way home.

I put a status on Facebook, said, "New Year wasn't as expected,

but you gotta make the most of the situation."

And I had at least two people inbox me on Facebook

telling us that their holidays hadn't gone to plan.

So that's when the penny dropped for me.

I said, "Lyne is committing fraud."

She's taking people's money for a holiday that was never booked.

And I said that is fraud.

This must be a horrible situation

for Louise to be in because

she's the one that introduced her circle of friends

to Lyne in the first place.

She also has to go through the very awkward scenario

of explaining to her friends who Lyne actually really is and what she's done.

[Louise] When we got home, I physically couldn't

have sat in the same room as Lyne because at that point,

I felt very emotional about what had happened.

I felt very, um, disappointed.

Erm, felt that I'm being lied to.

So I didn't want to see Lyne.

The distress of reacting to such a traumatic experience

can take many forms.

Some people want to have a confrontation

with the perpetrator, but it seems like

in Louise's case, she withdrew.

She isolated herself.

Feels like she almost wanted to step back from the situation.

Maybe there was so much guilt,

and maybe a degree of embarrassment and shame as well.

Stanley's a friendly area. It's a friendly town.

And it is quite close knit. People all seem to know each other,

and they know each other's business.

At the Northern Echo, we use Facebook groups to

post our stories and to share local information about people

but also threads that are posted within them

come up on our newsfeed, so we get to

find out information about what's going on as well.

And it was through the course of doing that work that

we noticed people commenting about Lyne Barlow.

At this point, there was several people saying

the same sort of thing, so it was enough to pique our interest.

Lyne has a number of people asking her for refunds which

obviously she cannot provide.

So I'm sure at this point, it would've felt like

the net is closing in and there would've been

a huge sense of both panic and also fear.

She no longer has the options of plastering over the cracks

and continuing her fraudulent activity,

and just hoping that somehow, this would pan out.

People were saying that they paid lots of money

to Lyne Barlow, that they booked a holiday

with her and that they weren't able to get refunds.

We didn't publish anything straight away,

but we did contact the police.

And it was a couple of months later

in September 2020,

when the police came back and issued a statement

and said that police were investigating,

that Lyne had been arrested.

And that they were appealing for her potential victims to come forward.

So we were helping with the police investigations.

To, erm, encourage people to come forward.

It was gonna be a long running investigation.

Very wide ranging with potentially

hundreds of victims.

At that point, we knew that there was something going on.

[Paul] We got a phone call from the reception saying

can you please come down, there's a problem.

We were texting Lyne Barlow and said, "You know what

this problem is?" By this time,

she wasn't texting us back and she wasn't online on WhatsApp.

So we was a bit concerned.

We didn't wanna alarm the wives.

So me, Garreth, and Cal went down and tried to sort the situation out.

And the manager actually took us into his office

and he was saying that

you've only been booked in for three nights of your 14 nights.

So we was like, well this isn't possible.

We've got a booking confirmation saying 14 nights.

So the managers said that's a fake documentation.

That's not what we use for this hotel.

The manager says, don't worry, you can just stay here

for the duration of the holiday.

But we want 2,800 pound per couple.

We was saying, well, that's not possible.

You need to ring your head office

to try and get this sorted.

So he said he will ring the head office

and see what he can do.

But he came back and said, no, there's nothing we can do.

You've got two choices.

You either pay this money or you're gonna have to leave the hotel.

We was going, there's no way we're paying this.

We've paid our money, we've worked hard for this holiday,

and we cannot afford to give you any more money.

So we had no option but to leave the hotel.

Now, while this was all getting sorted,

we had a full day in the hotel

because the girls were still at the swimming pool

while we were trying to sort this out.

Said we are not paying the 2,800 pound.

He says, well, we want 280 pound off you now

to cover the expenses of the room for that one day.

Or he's gonna call the police on us.

While this is going on, we must've been in the manager's office

for three or four hours.

Garreth is texting Lyne.

For Paul being threatened by the presence of police,

it must've been really confusing and overwhelming.

And all of this is happening at a time where

Paul is finally realizing that it's all smoke and mirrors,

that his holiday plans are almost non-existent.

And he must've felt this huge sense of injustice.

He's not the one that's done anything wrong.

It's Lyne Barlow, but yet, it almost feels like

he's being treated like a criminal.

[Paul] While Garreth is texting her, he got another message

off a family friend

saying that Lyne's been arrested

and her phone's been took off her by the police.

So we knew then that we were on our own here.

The manager of the hotel, he's saying,

if we don't pay the 280 pound, he's gonna call the police.

We're all working people, and we just didn't have the money.

So we're living an absolute nightmare here.

We're absolutely devastated.

Couldn't believe what was going on.

I said to Garreth, check your emails

to make sure our boarding passes that Lyne said she'd send

are in your inbox.

And when he opened his inbox, he couldn't believe

that his boarding passes wasn't there.

So that's when we really knew we were stuck in Turkiye.

We had to somehow break it to the wives

that had worked so hard for this holiday.

And we had to tell them that we were in the middle of a scam,

and we need to pack the bags because we need to be out within one hour.

I feel like I've gotta look after my wife

and I feel like I've let her down in a way

because she's so upset and then you're quite frightened as well

'cause you're stuck in a foreign country

and you just don't know what to do for the best.

I said to Cal and Garreth, we need to pay this money,

the 280 pound for the day and we need to get out of the hotel.

We don't want the police involved.

We just decided to get a taxi

to a local bar and we could sit between us

and try and work out what we're gonna do.

We got some drinks and the girls are crying their eyes out.

Even though Lyne's been arrested,

I said that "just never know."

"Lyne will sort this out for us."

And we were hoping by a thread

that Lyne would pay the hotel

the money that was due and we could move back to the hotel.

So we woke up the next day.

We checked our phone and there was no messages again.

So we knew now we needed to try and get back home,

back to England.

We checked the flights. Unlucky for us,

within COVID, there was hardly any flights.

We were still stranded in Turkiye.

From Paul's perspective, they really needed this holiday.

And they really needed a break.

So I'm sure there's a lot of pressure on him.

He probably took some of the burden on his own shoulders and felt that

he messed things up,

which is obviously completely unfair.

In the end, we managed to actually get a flight

back to Newcastle in seven days' time.

And that's the only flight we could get back.

So with the flight and the transfers to get back to the airport,

and the extra seven days,

which cost us in the range of an extra 1,500 pounds

to stay for the next seven days.

So we spent quite a lot of money getting out of Turkiye. 2,600 pound is a lot

of money for us.

So an extra 1,500 quid.

We didn't know what we was gonna do,

so we had to put it on a credit card.

And then we was gonna have to pay that credit card off somehow

when we got back home.

We start speaking to our friends

and we thought maybe... Was a rumor or not,

then we found out it wasn't a rumor

and she had been arrested.

And then suddenly, her website went down.

Her Facebook, that was gone.

So there was no way to get in touch with her.

The next thing I knew was, well, she was arrested,

erm, for fraud and I couldn't believe it.

And I was... A little part of us was still...

hoping and wishing that there was a valid reason

behind it, that this was not

the Lyne that I knew. There was something else going on.

The Facebook group had been created

for the victims so they could share their experiences.

They were working together to get information

and the police was part of that investigation.

During the last seven days that we were staying there,

we joined a Facebook group

and we was hearing horror stories.

[Gavin] It was at that stage when we realized that

that was more than just a handful of people.

The police said there was potentially hundreds of victims

and it made us realize that this was a really big

complex fraud case.

It was really surprising to know that

there had been hundreds of people who'd been

potentially conned out of money in this way.

In 20 years as a local reporter,

I've never come across a fraud case like this.

First day back, I decided I need to get answers off Lyne.

And I wanted my money back.

I went to her house and rang on the bell,

knocked on the door, there was no answer.

I looked through the window and I couldn't see any sign of life.

So I went around the back of the house

and I just couldn't believe what I've seen.

A conservatory at the back of the house

was all burnt down.

When I came back to the front of the house,

the actual neighbors come out and they told us that

people had been around and set fire to the house.

She said a lot of people have been this week.

It's not just you. To try and confront Lyne.

But we actually don't even know where she is either.

She'd moved out of the area as a result of the anger

that had been directed to her because of what she'd done.

Erm, we heard that her house in Stanley had been firebombed

and she no longer lived in County Durham.

There was certainly a great deal of anger

from the community at Lyne Barlow.

I knew then that that was it.

We'll never ever see her again.

People started saying the cancer claim was fake.

Nobody lies about cancer, you know,

you don't lie about things like that.

And I spoke to someone who'd had confirmation from

the police that they were investigating her.

She actually didn't have cancer.

And that was when my mind changed

and the hatred and the negative thoughts came about her.

You know, the fraud's one thing,

but then the cancer was just another level for me.

We'd heard rumors from people that we'd spoken to

and that she'd told them she had cancer

when they started asking for their money back.

[Paul] And that just made it even worse for us.

We knew then what kind of woman

we were dealing with

and she had no remorse and no morals.

[Claire] Cancer's very close to us.

We've got friends and family who've, you know,

suffered from cancer and she's got the audacity to lie about it.

Lyne's obvious character traits are

a massive lack of empathy,

she seems very callous and calculated,

and she's clearly driven by greed, wealth and status.

[Paul] The police contacted us and they then told us

how big of a scam this actually was

and we just couldn't believe how many people she actually ripped off.

Through this next 12 months after that,

the police was just keeping us updated on the case.

On every update that they was giving us,

it was telling us more and more people that would come through.

The police said they'd never seen

a case like this before.

It would appear that Lyne's victims were far and wide.

Everybody was a victim, they were. She tricked everybody.

It wasn't until July 2022 that Lyne Barlow was charged with

a number of fraud offenses and money laundering.

And the court date was set.

She was committed to appear before Durham Crown Court.

The reason it was sent to the higher court is

the scale of the fraud was so large

that magistrates wouldn't have the power to give her an adequate sentence.

Lyne Barlow did appear in person

at Durham Crown Court in October 2022.

She was photographed as she entered the courtroom

accompanied by another woman.

She entered a guilty plea to most of the charges.

She appeared hunched over.

She had long dark hair.

She certainly wasn't wearing a head scarf.

[Sohom] Lyne almost certainly regretted her actions.

But there's a big difference between feeling genuine remorse

related to guilt for her victims

and just being upset that she was caught.

[Louise] I still can't understand it now

why she would do that, why she would do what she did to

our close friends, our family,

our children, our husband.

[Sohom] Obviously, at the heart of Lyne's motivation

is an element of greed.

But I think there's more to it than that.

She also has this luxurious lifestyle.

So to me, it suggests that she also wants

a degree of admiration.

She wants to gain respect from her peers.

I think deep down to a degree, Lyne must've known

that there's a good chance she'd eventually be caught,

but I think she was so caught up in the scam at the moment,

she thought she could keep it going.

[Paul] We estimated, me and Elizabeth lost 4,300 pound.

And that is such a lot of money for

two people that work hard,

that we work for our holidays.

So this has put me off seeking bargains

for the rest of my life.

She's just ruined my confidence.

And I feel quite ashamed about that. That I keep letting her do that.

But that's how I feel about booking holidays.

It seems that Paul's whole outlook and perspective has changed.

Paul previously was quite confident.

He didn't really necessarily question his own decisions.

Whereas going through this experience,

I think it might've changed his own outlook on life.

So he might perceive himself as being a bit naive.

He might start being a bit more sensitive

and defensive about future decisions.

And unfortunately, that is a consequence of fraud.

Sometimes, the victim questions

their own beliefs, their own judgments.

Sometimes they even place the blame on themselves,

which is obviously incorrect and unfair.

[Gavin] I think it has had quite a shocking effect

on the local community.

People trust each other and know each other.

It is a close knit community.

From speaking to some of Lyne's victims,

um, they're pleased that justice has caught up with her.

And for somebody to deceive people

in such a cold hearted and callous way,

people that she knew, people who trusted her.

There's a lot of anger understandably towards her.

But she's now, erm, gone through the judicial system.

They don't have any sympathy about what lies ahead for her though.

[Louise] I think people are bitter, erm,

because holidays, it's a big thing you save all year for.

And if you don't get what you've paid for,

you don't get what you want. It does have a massive impact.

This whole trail of events has made me think about

how I judge people and what I think about people

and you take things at face value. Erm...

It's made us think about what did I really know about her

and how true was anything?

So anything she's ever told me, I now question, "Was it real?"

It must be really difficult to try and just conceptualize

the fact that a friend of yours,

somebody that you've known personally

has tried to deceive you.

Not only might it make you question your own judgment,

but it might even make you question some of your other friendships.

It must feel quite personal. It must feel like

you can't trust people in general in the future

because if Lyne came across as so credible,

and if she could do this, then potentially anybody can.

[Gavin] Some people did get to go on holiday it seems.

We've spoken to victims who were convinced to part with their cash

because they knew people who'd been on holidays

and seemed to get a really good deal

Lyne Barlow seemed to be offering,

erm, discounted holidays at an affordable rate.

And it seemed within people's reach.

Erm, I think that's what persuaded people.

So we don't quite understand how the scam operated,

but some people did get away it seems.

[Paul] So all six of us still love to go on holiday,

but we spend so much time. I feel like I've got to be so thorough.

We have to book holidays in advance

with big reputable companies,

but it does cost us more money.

I would never say never to go to an independent travel agent

'cause I still think, you know,

there's some genuine people out there.

We'd just come across the one who wasn't genuine.

So if I could say anything to Lyne Barlow,

I would say, why did she do this?

Why did you think you could get away for it so long?

You took so much money. But actually lying about having an illness,

for me, you're just lowest of the low.