Call handlers at Durham Constabulary received so many reports regarding travel fraudster Lyne Barlow in such a short space of time they risked being overwhelmed, police have said.

Rumours had been circulating on social media that travel agent had been selling holidays to members of the public but many of these either did not exist or had not been fully paid for.

Dozens of calls suddenly started coming into Durham Constabulary’s control room on September 10, 2020, and, now, with the 39-year-old behind bars, the force has released parts of the calls that kickstarted their painstaking investigation.

Play the video below to hear people ringing in to report Lyne Barlow.

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The situation was causing unprecedented demand on call handlers, and the unusual step was taken to direct complainants to an email address, which was quickly set up to deal with what was happening.

This prevented the control room being overrun and therefore preventing any emergency calls from being delayed.

Durham Constabulary’s Economic Crime Unit were alerted to what was happening and the team knew instantly that there was potentially something significant going on.

Detective Sergeant Alan Meehan said: “Very quickly we identified that the call for service was such that it would affect the day-to-day running of the communications.

“The volume of call coming in could affected our response to immediate responses so the decision was made to diver the holiday calls to an email address to allow people to report without affecting the communication centre.

“We have historically used this before but not at that stage of the investigation that we found ourselves at that time.”

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There are generally five members of the team who deal with complex frauds that come into the force.

However, initially a 20-strong team was drafted in from other departments for a short period to help log all the complaints being called in.

Once contact details were acquired for all the victims, a decision was made that a survey would be used to acquire the key information needed from each complainant.

This took time to set up but once organised, a link to an online survey was sent out.

This allowed officers to work closely with analysts, to pull the data together, allowing them to start piecing together what had happened.

The investigation focussed on those people who had lost money because of Barlow’s actions.

The Northern Echo: Lyne Barlow appearing at Durham Crown Court in October Lyne Barlow appearing at Durham Crown Court in October (Image: PA)

DS Meehan said: “It would be something like a holiday to Dubai all-inclusive that was significantly lower than the market prices.

“Because some people had actually been on their holidays it gave others confidence to book.

“It was very much a relatively small business that grew through word of mouth and comments on social media.

“The holiday business was primarily being run from a Facebook account.

“The nature of the offence led to a certain point where she couldn’t continue anymore, where people were not getting their holidays.

“With it being on social media, people starting making complaints and it had a waterfall affect.

“Initially it was on her Facebook page but I do believe there were other sites where people were voicing opinion.”

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Hundreds of hours were spent collating holiday details from victims, speaking to banks and travel companies trying to unravel the scam and create a timeline of what had happened and when.

Within days of the first calls, officers arrested Barlow, who claimed to have cancer, however on being brought into custody, she eventually admitted that this was a lie.

She was bailed while the investigation continued.

Officers then updated her family on the situation, which included telling them she did not have cancer as she had claimed.

Information then started coming in that Barlow had borrowed money from several people and encouraged others to invest savings or pension pay outs.

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The team had to go through hundreds of documents to gather the relevant information to piece the case together.

Barlow was arrested again in July 2021, and during interviews she admitted offences relating to loans and investment fraud, together with the holiday scam.

DS Meehan said: “Some people had to save up for their holidays and so there has been significant financial harm to individuals but also emotional harm because people had planned significant holidays for events such as weddings, honeymoons, hen dos and significant birthdays.”