A fraudster who had already been sentenced for defrauding her employer to the tune of £22,000 has appeared in court again after using a customer's credit card to pay for a holiday to Menorca.
Rebecca Waterfall, 31, was working as a guest relations executive at the Principal Hotel in Manchester when she used the credit card of a man booking a hotel stay for himself and his wife in 2018.
She fraudulently used his details to pay for a £1,459 one-week stay at a "premium holiday villa" in the Spanish island of Menorca with her partner and child in October 2018.
Mum-of-two Waterfall also used the man's card to buy £148 worth of shopping from Asda, and paid £515 to a currency firm, Manchester Evening News reports.
She also bought a child's sun hat worth £15.99, and a Minnie Mouse poncho towel for £12.48 from Amazon.
The victim had the money refunded.
She previously defrauded a travel agent she worked for to the tune of £22,000.
She used the money to offer friends discounted holidays to destinations including Cuba and Switzerland, and enjoyed a trip to Australia with her boyfriend.
Waterfall, from Salford, had previously also pocketed £5,000 which a family had paid her to go to Disney World in Florida.
They had to be pulled out of a check-in line by police at Manchester airport, after the crime committed by Waterfall, a "family friend", was uncovered.
The court heard she had paid the money back to the family, who had to repay to board the Florida-bound flight.
After being arrested for the latest offence, Waterfall claimed it had been an accident, and she had no knowledge of the transactions.
Waterfall initially received a suspended sentence in January 2017 for the fraud committed while working for Cheshire-based travel agent Incentivise.
At the Manchester Crown Court hearing on Monday, it emerged she was later jailed for nine months in January 2019, after failing to comply with the suspended sentence.
Now she has received a community order, after a judge said it would be "wrong" to jail her again.
Judge Nicholas Dean QC said she would likely have received a longer sentence when her suspended sentence was activated, if that judge had been aware of the most recent fraud.
"It seems to me it would be wrong now to send you to prison, and I am not going to do that," Judge Dean told her.
The court was told that Waterfall has applied to enrol on a nursing apprenticeship.
But the judge said he believed she may have "made up" the application.
"It is hard to resist the conclusion this has been made up to present a less worrying aspect of her personality to the court," Judge Dean said.
Describing her as an "intelligent young woman", the judge told Waterfall: "You are prone to give way to greed and opportunistic dishonesty.
"You must learn to resist such temptations if they are in front of you."
Imposing the community order, the judge continued: "With some doubts about the wisdom of this course, and as to whether you really have turned a corner, as the probation service seem convicted that you have, I am going to impose a 12 month community order."
Waterfall admitted five counts of fraud.
