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Brit expat in Mallorca accused of defrauding hotel chains with travel insurance scam
| Published: | 10 May at 6 PM |
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A well-known British expat living on Mallorca is now in court accused of encouraging British tourists to file fake illness claims in order to benefit UK-based law firms.
Laura Cameron and six employees of her company Elite Project Marketing were arrested in September last year on charges of creating an illegal network targeting and defrauding major hotel chains on the island. Amongst the companies affected are Mac Hotels and the international Melia Group, both of which are sueing her along with the Mallorca Hoteliers Association.
Cameron is denying all allegations, saying she and her employees were not targeting tourists and inveigling them into filing false insurance claims. Cameron’s defence is that her workers were simply collecting the names and telephone numbers of British visitors to the island in order to sell the data to British marketing firms. They don’t, she said, focus on any specific problem holidaymakers may have, including food poisoning, and simply talk with visitors on the street.
Cameron is based in Calvia, not far from her millionaire mother who’s lived on Mallorca for thirty years, and has admitted she sells the information gained by her touts to several marketing agencies and three UK law firms. One UK legal office paid €5,500 for a thousand names and numbers and the same firm paid her a total of €34,171 during the last quarter of 2016. Her employees were paid €110 for each visitor who later filed an insurance claim.
Local detectives believe the fake holiday sickness scam began in 2014 and, up until last year, has cost Mallorca’s hospitality industry €60 million. However, the accused stressed her marketing business had only started collecting holidaymakers’ data around a year ago.
Laura Cameron and six employees of her company Elite Project Marketing were arrested in September last year on charges of creating an illegal network targeting and defrauding major hotel chains on the island. Amongst the companies affected are Mac Hotels and the international Melia Group, both of which are sueing her along with the Mallorca Hoteliers Association.
Cameron is denying all allegations, saying she and her employees were not targeting tourists and inveigling them into filing false insurance claims. Cameron’s defence is that her workers were simply collecting the names and telephone numbers of British visitors to the island in order to sell the data to British marketing firms. They don’t, she said, focus on any specific problem holidaymakers may have, including food poisoning, and simply talk with visitors on the street.
Cameron is based in Calvia, not far from her millionaire mother who’s lived on Mallorca for thirty years, and has admitted she sells the information gained by her touts to several marketing agencies and three UK law firms. One UK legal office paid €5,500 for a thousand names and numbers and the same firm paid her a total of €34,171 during the last quarter of 2016. Her employees were paid €110 for each visitor who later filed an insurance claim.
Local detectives believe the fake holiday sickness scam began in 2014 and, up until last year, has cost Mallorca’s hospitality industry €60 million. However, the accused stressed her marketing business had only started collecting holidaymakers’ data around a year ago.
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