iPad fraudster jailed for two years after scamming close to £500,000 for 'cheap iPads'
Kirsty Cox, the mastermind behind an iPad scam worth neatly half a million pounds, has been jailed for two years.
Cox claimed she could source the Apple devices at a reduced price taking thousands of orders between March and December 2012.
Despite taking payment for the tablets Cox, who previously admitted four fraud charges, failed to provide them.
Judge George Moorhouse, who passed the two year sentence, said Cox had "caused misery" to children last Christmas by "tricking" their families into thinking she could come good on the offer of providing iPads with £50-£100 off the retail price.
Cox's former sister-in-law Karen Kennedy revealed how she and her husband Saul had taken money from work colleagues passing it onto Cox in return for cheap iPads.
"She had a really good reputation," said Kennedy. "She told me that she could get really cheap iPads and she had been supplying them to loads of companies and she asked me to spread the word at my work. I trusted her 100 per cent and I had no reason not to."
Court reports show that Cox had attempted to cover her tracks by purchasing £1.52m worth of iPads from PC World, selling them at a loss before her arrest in December 2012.
Detective Superintendent Neil Jones of Durham Police commented: "The actual real cutting effect was for the people who had been saving the small amounts per week to buy iPads for the kids for Christmas. To find out the week before that your goods weren't coming was devastating, people's Christmases were ruined."
Prosecutor Shaun Dodds said hundreds of people were defrauded by Cox, with the actual loss to customers close to £1.1m.