British mother, 42, among eight Brits charged in ‘fake food-poisoning fraud’

Eight Britons have been accused in connection with a Spanish food poisoning scam in which tourists were convinced to lie about being ill in order to claim compensation, according to a judge.

Pregnant Laura Cameron Joyce arriving at court in Majorca, September 7, 2017
Laura Holmes Cameron and her brother Marc Cameron Grimstead are accused of targeting all-inclusive hotels in Majorca with their fraudulent claims.

Holmes Cameron, the owner of a notorious club in Magaluf who was born in Essex, is currently on trial alongside her sibling and six suspected accomplices who were paid to encourage visitors to make the claims.

Laura Cameron Joyce, while pregnant, arrives before court in Mallorca on September 7, 2017

Deborah Holmes, Laura Holmes Cameron’s mother, was investigated but not charged in the investigation.

Laura Holmes Cameron (right) and her mother Deborah Cameron, who was previously detained in the investigation but no further action was taken, are pictured here.

In a six-page judgement issued by an investigative court in Majorca, the suspects are accused of constructing a “profit-driven organized gang” through Elite Project Marketing SL, a Spanish company they founded.Laura Holmes Cameron (right) is pictured with her mother Deborah who was investigated but not charged in the probeLaura Holmes Cameron (right) and her mother Deborah Cameron (left), who was previously held in the probe but no further action was taken

It adds: ‘The gang specialized in obtaining the details of British tourists staying in all-inclusive hotels in Majorca, then persuading them, using a form they had created, to falsely claim they had become ill during their stay in one of these hotels so they could claim compensation in the United Kingdom.’

It adds: “The total amount of compensation obtained in the United Kingdom for the resulting damage to tour operators and hotels significantly exceeded £176,000.”

At the time of Laura’s arrest in September 2017, it was reported that hoteliers had lost millions as a result of the scam.

Detectives calculated the losses of the three hotel groups whose fraud claims prompted the Civil Guard-led Operation Claims to be approximately £9.5 million at the time.

In a judgement made public today, investigating judge Maria Perez Ruiz acknowledged that the ultimate amount of money robbed has not yet been ascertained, and she asked prosecutors engaged in the case to seek indictments.Laura Holmes Cameron, Essex-born owner of a notorious Magaluf bar, now faces trial

The offences allegedly committed by the eight suspects in 2016 and 2017 are fraud and involvement in a criminal group.

Now, Laura Holmes Cameron, who was born in Essex and owns a notorious club in Magaluf, is on trial.

Laura Holmes Cameron (left) and her mother Deborah (right), who was investigated but not charged in the investigation, are pictured here.

The alleged criminal organization was charged with targeting all-inclusive hotels in Majorca with false claims.

Photograph of Laura Holmes Cameron (left) with her husband Stuart Holmes (right)Laura Holmes Cameron (left) pictured with her husband Stuart Holmes (right)

They are Laura Holmes Cameron, who is being prosecuted under her maiden name and not her married one, Laura Joyce, as well as her brother Marc, Ryan Bridge, Simon Robert Flanagan, Tegan Jewel Sumerlee, Susan Amanda Lyle, Nicola Marie Sanderson, and Peter Carl Murphy.

Bridge, who was once referred to as the only director of UK holiday claims, has been described as ‘one of the individuals in England tasked with handling bogus claims.’

The other five British nationals have been described as commission-based employees “hired by the two siblings to go to different hotels and obtain the personal information of tourists, including information that would allow the consumption of meals in hotels to be linked to alleged food poisoning.”

Four further British nationals were discovered during the course of the investigation, but their whereabouts are unknown and they have not been formally questioned.

The investigative judge issued her important court judgement after rejecting an attempt by Holmes Cameron and Bridge’s attorneys to dismiss the case against their clients, noting that “multiple indications of criminality existed.”

She stated in her decision that only 38 of the 800 Club Mac Alcudia guests who filed compensation claims had requested medical help.

In the absence of a final appeal by the suspects, a state prosecutor and private prosecutors acting on behalf of the impacted hotels will now be invited to present indictments. Then, a trial date would be scheduled.

The court stated in her decision that just 38 of the 800 vacationers staying at Club Mac Alcudia (pictured) who submitted claims for compensation had requested medical attention.

In 2017, authorities searched Laura Holmes Cameron and Stuart Holmes’ bar Heroes in Puerto Portals.

Photograph of Laura Holmes Cameron (left) with her husband Stuart Holmes (right)

Holmes Cameron’s attorney, Gabriel Llado, stated when his client appeared in court in May 2018 for a closed hearing that she agreed to passing on the names and phone numbers of vacationers in exchange for cash, but argued that it was for market research purposes only.

He insisted that neither Holmes Cameron nor any of the so-called ‘claims farmers’ she used to collect information on tourists she passed on to others in the United Kingdom encouraged them to obtain chemist’s receipts so they could file fraudulent food poisoning claims, as police and hoteliers’ representatives have claimed.

In addition, he said that his client had only spent a few months on the work before abandoning it due to her meager earnings.

Holmes Deborah Cameron, Cameron’s mother, was previously detained in the investigation, but no further action was taken.

The affluent mother was also detained at the opulent property in upscale Bendinat that the couple formerly occupied near the fashionable port of Puerto Portals, but she was released before to appearing in court.

After Holmes Cameron’s arrest, it was revealed that her pub in Magaluf, Playhouse, was the location where a British tourist was caught performing sex acts on 24 men for a cheap drink in the summer of 2014.

Regional governors branded the ‘outrageous’ sex acts as giving the region and women a ‘bad image’ and vowed to’stop it in whatever way we can’ after the infamous video’s repercussions prompted a crackdown on bar crawls in the party destination.

Laura Holmes Cameron (pictured) was charged on her maiden name and not as Laura Joyce Cameron.

Suspect-Peter Carl Murphy is depicted on the left.

Holmes Cameron, who was not present at her pub when the tragedy occurred, immediately closed Playhouse.

As a result of disasters like as the fake food poisoning scam in Majorca, the British government announced new steps to crack down on false claims of holiday illness.

In the same year as the arrests in Majorca, the Benidorm hotel group HOSBEC estimated that fraudulent food poisoning claims by British tourists cost Spanish hotels almost £55 million.

Some reports at the time indicated that British tourists will be banned from certain all-inclusive Costa hotels.

Private investigators hired by hotels combed through the social media accounts of numerous fraudsters and discovered that they had posted images of themselves eating and drinking while claiming to insurance that they were in bed with diarrhoea.

A family that claimed their vacation was wrecked by food poisoning was imprisoned in February 2021 when Facebook images proved that they had enjoyed the waterslide and bar throughout their stay.


»British mother, 42, among eight Brits charged in ‘fake food-poisoning fraud’«

↯↯↯Read More On The Topic On TDPel Media ↯↯↯