A travel agent previously imprisoned for defrauding customers has returned to court after admitting to a new scam where she used clients' money to fund her own luxury holidays. Rebecca Waterfall, 37, is accused of conning customers out of more than £10,000 while working at a Cheshire travel agency, spending the illicit gains on trips abroad for herself.
According to prosecutors, Waterfall obtained customers' bank card details and used them to pay for her own vacations, including a stay at a luxury hotel costing £3,467. One customer was defrauded of £1,136, and Waterfall also laundered £3,530 into a third-party account. Some victims reportedly received text messages claiming payment errors were being rectified for their bookings.
Waterfall's motive, as presented in Manchester Magistrates' Court, was a desire to provide her family with a "nice life." The court heard that victims trusted Waterfall to arrange their holiday accommodations, only to discover they had been deceived. The scam unraveled when a customer booked a trip to Antalya, Turkey, using the customer's bank card details but Waterfall's own email address.
Waterfall, of Salford, has pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud by false representation and one count of money laundering, offenses alleged to have occurred between January and May 2023. Her defense attorney suggested that Waterfall's actions were not sophisticated and that she was likely to be caught. She claimed Waterfall was "trying to show her family she had the means to give them a nice life."
Magistrates noted the impact on victims, particularly in light of Waterfall's own reported statement in a pre-sentence report that she had "never really understood the value of money." The case has been sent to Manchester Crown Court for sentencing next month.
This is not Waterfall's first offense. She has prior convictions for fraud, with a previous court appearance in 2017 detailing a similar scheme. At that time, she defrauded a family of £5,250 for a Walt Disney World holiday, using her employer's credit card. She also used credit cards to pay for holidays to Cuba and Switzerland for friends and took a trip to Australia with her boyfriend, passing the financial losses onto the travel company. A judge at that hearing described her actions as the "travel agency equivalent of a Ponzi scheme."
In 2019, a nine-month suspended sentence was activated after Waterfall breached its terms. She admitted to further fraud charges in 2021, including using a customer's credit card in 2018 to book a £1,400 luxury holiday to Menorca while working at a Manchester hotel. She also made unauthorized purchases totaling £148 for shopping and paid £515 to a currency firm. On that occasion, she received a community order, with a judge deeming it "wrong" to imprison her.