Scottish victims of a £350,000 motorhome fraudster have called on the crook to be sent to prison for the damage she has caused to their lives.
Elderly Scots had handed over their pension pots to broker Christine Galloway, 68, who over a span of two years had tricked owners into handing over their vans for her to sell on.
The former director of St Andrews Motorhomes, in Cupar, Fife, had scammed motorhome owners out of their prized possessions in order to sell them and use the proceeds to support her own failing business.
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At first, she was charged with raking in more than £750,000 by selling on 40 vehicles that had belonged to her customers. However, the Crown accepted her guilty plea to fraudulently obtaining a lesser amount of £347,450 from a dozen clients between 2016 and 2018.
Among those impacted by the scam were retired heroic paramedics, Robert and Carol Moore, from Dunoon, Argyll, who had given over their van to the brazen broker in 2018 and have never seen their retirement nest egg since, the Daily Record reports.
Speaking on behalf of a victim support group she set up in the wake of the scam, Carol said: “Five years on, we’ve not received a penny back and we’re not likely to.
“We wanted our day in court with her to tell her exactly what she’s done to these people. We just see her as a coward.”
Prosecutor Stewart Duncan told Dundee Sheriff Court on Monday that Galloway, formerly of Pitscottie, ran a well established business for about 30 years.
Victims were told they would receive payment within 30 days of the sale of their vans, with Galloway telling them to hand over keys and documents relating to the vehicles.
But the company went into liquidation in 2018 while scores of customers were awaiting cash for the deals they had agreed.
Victims were initially told the case was a civil matter but investigators uncovered evidence of fraud.
Among those victims was James Graham, who was 75 when he did a deal with the broker but has since passed away. He met Galloway in September 2016 and she agreed to sell his motorhome for £53,000. It was sold, but he never received a penny.
Robert and Carol, both 66, agreed to sell their van to Galloway for £32,000 but realised something was wrong when they saw comments on the company’s Facebook page about it going out of business. It was sold for £27,250 but they never saw the cash.
The couple had invested their pension funds in the Peugeot Boxer and were relying on the sale to help fund a dream trip to Canada – which instead left them in debt.
Robert said: “We ended up having to put more money on credit cards and cut the holiday short. We’ve not seen a penny and someone else is driving about with our van.
“We’re just hoping for any sort of custodial sentence because of the amount of money she took from people – they were virtually all pensioners.
“We never got any compensation. She was declared bankrupt and according to the liquidator she had no assets whatsoever.”
Carol said she wanted the public to know the true impact of Galloway’s crime. She said: “She waited until the very last minute to make a plea.
“A lot of the vehicles were dropped out to get to this figure. A lot of people in the group feel as if they’ve been discarded.
“Having the group I created has been a big help to all the victims because we were just left in limbo. There were people in their 80s who wanted to settle up for their vans because they were getting too old.
“People have since died – yet we’re just to get on with it. If we’d gone out and left the keys in the van in a car park and it had been stolen we would have been covered then.
“This was our pension pot. We could have sat it in the bank but we thought we would get enjoyment out of it instead. She took that away from us.”
Galloway, who is now living in Rhyl, north Wales, is on bail and will return to court next month to face sentence.
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