A woman described as obsessed with radio contests has been convicted in a UK court for defrauding stations by winning multiple prizes under false identities. She’s been sentenced to 40 weeks behind bars, although that could be suspended by the judge. Oh, and she’s banned from entering any radio or TV contest for two years.
According to the Telegraph newspaper, the 44-year-old mother of three forged name change documents and other paperwork in her scheme to cheat in the radio contests. But it wasn’t the money she craved, although one prize was 171,000 pounds (about $237,000), so much as the “attention and recognition.” She offered a raft of excuses when radio station representatives became suspicious. Eventually, she was done in by voice recognition tests and other checks to determine her true identity.
Even after being arrested for trying to swindle Magic FM, Capital FM and Virgin Radio, the woman entered yet another Capital FM competition and won a 15,000 pound cash prize before being caught again. In court she admitted to four counts of fraud.
"When you tried to cheat a radio station out of its prizes you were not so much cheating a radio station but cheating other innocent members of the public who had legitimately entered those competitions and hoped to win them," the Telegraph quoted Judge Nicholas Loraine-Smith as saying in passing sentence.
