British mother, 43, faces eight years in hellhole Spanish jail for ‘hotel food poisoning scam’

A glamorous mother of three faces up to eight years in a hellish Spanish jail if convicted of a massive holiday food poisoning scam.

Laura Holmes Cameron can expect one of the harshest sentences of the British group of eight if she is proven to be the ringleader of the alleged scam at trial.

The 43-year-old Essex-born former bar owner describes herself on social media as an entrepreneur who now works in travel and commerce and “turns passions into paychecks”.

She was charged with fraud and membership in a criminal gang this week after a lengthy investigation sparked by police arrests in Mallorca in September 2017.

Well-placed insiders told MailOnline yesterday that the type of fraud he is charged with – aggravated fraud – carries a prison sentence of up to six years in Spain and the second count for which he faces a maximum prison sentence of two years.

One said: “She’s probably waiting five to eight years if she’s convicted of both crimes.” That is likely the type of sentence prosecutors will seek.

The coroner who indicted Laura, under her maiden name rather than her married name Joyce, charged her in a six-page written judgment with ‘leading the organized for-profit gang’ with her brother Marc Cameron Grimstead to through a Spanish company called Elite. Project Marketing SL.

Palma-based María Pérez Ruiz also accused the couple of hiring accomplices paid on commission for British tourists on the holiday island to make false claims of food poisoning.

Detectives at the time of their arrests were said to have estimated the losses of the hotel groups whose fraud allegations sparked a police crackdown dubbed Operation Claims at around £9.5 million.

MailOnline understands the final figure that the hoteliers and a State prosecutor will demand since the compensation has not yet been specified.

The coroner made it clear in the ruling made public on Wednesday that payments obtained in the UK for the alleged fraud in 2016 and 2017 “significantly exceeded” £176,000.

Prosecutors are expected to be invited to present their charges at the end of next month.

Jaime Campaner, a well-respected Mallorca-based lawyer, represents the island’s hotel federation, which launched its own legal action separately from the state prosecutor’s office as part of the same criminal case.

Laura’s lawyer is the experienced Gabriel Llado, who said after his client appeared in court in May 2018 in a closed-door hearing that he admitted passing tourists’ names and phone numbers for payment, but insisted in that it was part of a pure market research exercise.

He also insisted that neither suspected gang leaders nor so-called ‘claim farmers’ used to collect data from tourists which Laura passed on to others in the UK, encouraged tourists to obtain pharmacy receipts so they could make false claims of food poisoning as police and hoteliers’ representatives have affirmed.

A source close to the case said: “A conviction for fraud would result in a fine and a prison sentence.

“Obviously, prosecutors will also seek compensation for the amount they say has been defrauded.

“The final figure may not end up included in the indictments, but it will be made public at trial.”

The other six accused Britons have been identified as Ryan Bridge; Simon Robert Flanagan; Jewel Tegan Summerlee; Susan Amanda Lyle; Nicola Marie Sanderson; and Peter Carl Murphy.

Bridge, formerly known as the UK’s only holiday claims manager, has been described as “one of the people in England tasked with processing bogus claims”.

The other five Britons have been described as commissioners “hired by the two brothers to go to different hotels and obtain personal details from tourists, including details that would link consumption of hotel meals to suspected food poisoning.”

The case against four other Britons who had been identified as part of the investigation was provisionally closed, but only because their whereabouts are unknown and they have not been formally questioned.

Former Magaluf bar owner Laura, who now spends most of her time in the UK although is believed to have to register with a Palma court every few weeks as part of her probation conditions, was arrested in a luxury villa in Bendinat. close to the glamorous Mallorcan port of Puerto Portals.

After she was arrested, it emerged that her Playhouse bar had been identified as the location where a British tourist was filmed performing sex acts on 24 men for a cheap drink in the summer of 2014.

The fallout from the infamous video sparked a crackdown on bars in Magaluf after regional governors described the “shocking” sex scenes as giving the area and the women “a terrible image” and vowed to “stop it any way” they could. .

Laura, who was not at her bar when the incident occurred, closed the Playhouse soon after.

The British government has announced new measures to clamp down on false holiday sickness claims resulting from scandals such as the fake food poisoning scam in Mallorca.

The same year as the arrests in Mallorca, the Benidorm hotel association, HOSBEC, estimated that British guests were costing Spanish hotels around £55m in bogus food poisoning claims.

Some reports at the time even claimed that Brits were facing a holiday ban at some Costa all-inclusive hotels.

Many scammers were exposed after private detectives hired by the affected hotels trawled their social networks and discovered that they had been posting photos of themselves eating and drinking when they later claimed to insurers that they had been in bed with diarrhoea.

A family who claimed their vacation was ruined by food poisoning was jailed in February 2021 after Facebook photos showed them enjoying the waterslide and bar throughout the trip.

Christopher Byng, 38, Barbara Byng, 64, Linda Lane, 36, and Anthony Byng, 66, filed false claims for gastric illness against Jet2holidays following an all-inclusive trip to the Canary Islands in November 2016.

Christopher, Barbara and Anthony Byng were jailed for four months. Lane received a suspended sentence.