A convicted fraudster who cheated Justin Bieber fans over thousands of pounds by selling fake tickets has struck again – taking almost £ 31,000 from his employers.
Zainab Pervaiz avoided jail by a ‘whisker’ in 2017 after admitting 16 counts of fraud and being given a two-year suspended prison sentence.
But the 29-year-old, from Walsall, appeared in court again on Wednesday, April 14, facing a new allegation.
Crying as she sat on the platform at Birmingham Magistrates’ Court, Pervaiz admitted a charge of theft by an employee. She tricked her then-girlfriend into her previous racket, but this time she seemed to have confused her own mother.
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Pervais, from Swan Pool Grove, Shelfield, defrauded £ 30,753 from hiring Green Motion vans in 2018 after keeping the company in the dark about its previous convictions, the court said.
Amy Bentley, prosecuting, said: “The defendant already has 16 fraud convictions. She applied for a job with Green Motion in 2017, they were not aware (of her convictions).
“She was tasked with issuing refunds. Using a card reader, she made a series of dishonest refunds to a bank account in her mother’s name which she checked daily.
Ms Bentley said the case involved ‘strong guilt’ and ‘breach of trust’, attracting a starting point of around two years in prison before all the circumstances were taken into account.
This level of sentencing is beyond the competence of the magistrates and the case has therefore been referred to Birmingham Crown Court for sentencing.
Pervaiz’s representative, Abid Hussain, did not undertake personal mitigating measures during the hearing, but requested that she be released on unconditional bail.
His previous scam involved selling fake concert tickets to Justin Bieber fans as well as setting up online listings for Beyonce and Adele’s performances.
Between August 2015 and July 2016, Pervais defrauded victims of £ 9,982. But there was concern that many more people had not come forward and the ruse could have been worth as much as £ 40,000.
She had used a PayPal account belonging to his then-girlfriend’s unsuspecting grandfather to accept payment, and it was he who had to reimburse customers who complained about not receiving tickets.
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Pervais, a once-aspiring English sportswoman, had previously worked as a paralegal for a law firm before being sacked.
On sentencing in 2017, Judge Simon Drew QC told her a career in law was ‘almost certainly dead’ and concluded that she had committed the offenses to ‘take advantage of certain luxuries in your life’ ‘.
He told her she was ‘falling into a jail net’ but ruled it was in the ‘interests of justice’ to suspend her prison sentence.
Pervaiz will travel to Birmingham Crown Court on a date next month for the conviction on the theft charge.