Eight Britons have been charged over a holiday food poisoning scam in Spain in which tourists were tricked into lying they had been sick to claim compensation, a court has heard.
The two alleged criminal ringleaders, Laura Holmes Cameron and her brother Marc Cameron Grimstead, have been accused of targeting all-inclusive hotels in Mallorca with false allegations.
Holmes Cameron, the Essex-born owner of a notorious Magaluf bar, is now facing trial along with her brother and six of their alleged accomplices who were hired to coax tourists into making the claims.
Laura Holmes Cameron (right) is pictured with her mother Deborah who was investigated but not charged in the inquest
In a hard-hitting six-page ruling from a Majorca investigative court, the suspects are accused of forming an ‘organized for-profit gang’ through a Spanish company the couple set up called Elite Project Marketing SL.
He adds: ‘The gang that specializes in obtaining the contact details of British tourists at all-inclusive hotels in Mallorca convinced, through a form they themselves devised, to falsely claim that they had been ill during their stay in one of these hotels and to be able to claim compensation in the United Kingdom.
He adds: “The amount of compensation obtained in the UK with the damage it caused to tour operators and hotels was well over £176,000.”
Reports at the time of Laura’s arrest in September 2017 described hoteliers’ losses from the scam as “several million”.
Detectives also reportedly estimated at around £9.5m at the time the losses of the three hotel groups whose fraud claims triggered the Civil Guard-led operation claims.
Investigating Judge Maria Perez Ruiz admitted in her court ruling released today that the final defrauded figure has yet to be determined, as she invited prosecutors involved in the case to submit documents of charge.
The eight suspects have been charged with fraud and membership in a criminal gang, the crimes they allegedly committed occurred in 2016 and 2017.
The suspected criminal gang have been accused of targeting all-inclusive hotels in Mallorca with false allegations
They are Laura Holmes Cameron, prosecuted under her maiden name and not under her married name of Laura Joyce; his brother Mark; Ryan Bridge; Simon Robert Flanagan; Tegan Jewel Sumerlee; Susan Amanda Lyle, Nicola Marie Sanderson; and Peter Carl Murphy.
Bridge, previously appointed as the UK’s sole holiday claims manager, was described as ‘one of the people in England responsible for dealing with bogus claims’.
The other five Britons were described as people paid on commission “engaged by the two siblings to go to different hotels and obtain the personal details of tourists, including details which would link the consumption of meals in the hotels to alleged food poisoning”.
Four other Britons were identified in the investigation but they have been provisionally archived as their whereabouts are unknown and they have not been formally interviewed.
The magistrate issued his landmark ruling after rejecting an attempt by lawyers acting for Holmes Cameron and Bridge to dismiss the case against them, saying “several indicia of criminality existed”.
She said in her ruling that only 38 of the 800 holidaymakers staying at Club Mac Alcudia who submitted compensation claims sought medical assistance.
A public prosecutor and private prosecutors representing the hotels concerned will now be asked to file indictments in the absence of a final appeal from the suspects. A trial date would then be set.
The judge said in her ruling that only 38 of the 800 holidaymakers staying at Club Mac Alcudia (pictured) who submitted compensation claims sought medical assistance
Holmes Cameron’s lawyer, Gabriel Llado, said after his client appeared in court in May 2018 at a closed hearing that she admitted passing on the names and phone numbers of holidaymakers for payment, but insisted that this was part of a pure market research exercise.
He insisted that neither Holmes Cameron nor any of the so-called ‘complaints farmers’ she used to collect tourist data which she passed on to others in the UK, encouraged them to get receipts from the chemist so they can make false claims of food poisoning as police and hoteliers,” the representatives claimed.
And he claimed his client only spent a few months doing it and quit because she was earning very little.
Holmes Cameron’s mother, Deborah Cameron, was previously detained in the investigation, but no further action has been taken.
The wealthy mother was also held at the luxury Bendinat villa the couple later shared near Mallorca’s glamorous port of Puerto Portals, which police raided but were released before heading to court.
After Holmes Cameron’s arrest, it emerged his bar Magaluf Playhouse had been identified as the location where a British tourist was filmed performing sex acts on 24 men for a cheap drink in the summer of 2014.
The fallout from the infamous video sparked a crackdown on pub crawls in the resort town after regional governors described the ‘scandalous’ sex scenes as giving the region and women ‘a terrible image’ and have promised to ‘stop him any way’ they could.
Holmes Cameron, who was not at his bar when the incident happened, closed Playhouse soon after.
The UK government has announced new measures to crack down on false claims of holiday sickness following scandals like the fake Mallorca food poisoning scam.
In the same year of the Majorca arrests, Benidorm hotel association HOSBEC estimated that British customers were costing Spanish hotels around £55million in false food poisoning claims.
Some reports at the time even claimed Britons were facing a holiday ban at some all-inclusive Costa hotels.
Many fraudsters were surprised after private investigators hired by hotels scoured their social media and found they had posted photos of themselves eating and drinking when they later claimed to insurers that ‘they had been in bed with diarrhea.
A family who claimed their vacation was ruined by food poisoning were jailed in February 2021 after photos on Facebook revealed them enjoying the waterslide and bar along the trip.
