THE daughter of a fraudster who targeted businesses in south Cumbria has now admitted that she was also part of the audacious criminal plot.

Earlier this year, 39-year-old Sonia Malhi was jailed for 20 months after heading up a scamming gang which sought to dupe businesses in Kendal and elsewhere in the county.

They used stolen receipts from card terminal transactions made by innocent members of the public whose accounts were also attacked, one victim having earlier visited a Windermere art shop.

Criminal associates of Malhi used devious distraction techniques which allowed her to covertly enter card numbers manually and pay for rooms at luxury hotels, splash out on champagne and wrongly obtain refunds.

During a spree lasting several days, Malhi took centre stage as frauds and attempted frauds amounting to almost £14,000 were committed in Kendal - at Romneys and Stonecross Manor hotels; and in the Keswick and west Cumbria areas.

Malhi had previously occupied a lesser “distractor” role when copycat crimes running into thousands of pounds were committed in Cheshire several weeks before her journey to Cumbria. This was a small part of larger scale offending across the North West, Yorkshire and Leicestershire.

Her 20-year-old daughter, Tia Renee Malhi, had appeared in court last year and denied conspiring with others - including her mother - to commit fraud as part of the same illegal excursion.

But at Carlisle Crown Court on Monday she changed her plea to guilty.

Prosecutor Tim Evans said Tia Malhi, of Hobson Crescent, Audenshaw, Manchester, had occupied the role of a distractor as the Cumbria crimes were carried out. Receipts, an invoice and a reservation docket were recovered from her upon arrest.

Tia Malhi was poised to submit a formal basis for her guilty plea, the court heard, which will be considered by the prosecution in due course. She was “young, lightly convicted and, in the run up to this offending, committed a number of shoplifts”.

A pre-sentence report was ordered for Malhi, who was bailed and will be sentenced by a judge on a future date.