Walter Finch
A BRITISH travel agent who fleeced customers of nearly €325,000 from her agency in Magaluf has been narrowly spared jail.
Nicola Roberts, 60, was handed an 11-month suspended sentence after striking a plea bargain with prosecutors and repaying almost all the money she embezzled.
At a pre-trial hearing in Palma de Mallorca, Roberts confessed to scamming British Airways and Lufthansa among other airlines between December 2019 and January 2020.
The expat had been warned that she could be sent to prison for a year and a half if she went to trial and was found guilty.
She was accused of accepting money from customers to pay for flights from her business Ticket Agencia de Viajes in the town of Portals Nous.
But instead of handing it on to the airlines she was meant to be representing, she pocketed most of it herself.
However, the court recognised that Roberts had not only admitted her wrongdoing but also repaid almost all of the sum she had embezzled.
Roberts, who had been the subject of a long-running investigation into her activities by Mallorca prosecutors, is understood to have returned everything apart from €10,500 she still owed in interest.
READ MORE:
- Dozens of elderly tourists are struck down with stomach virus in Spain: Popular hotel in Mallorca is forced to…
- British tourist who confessed to raping his son’s friend in Spain’s Mallorca is jailed
- ‘Shagaluf’ no more: Planned demolition of iconic Magaluf hotel part of €4 million scheme to rebrand the Mallorca resort…
