A FRAUDSTER who pocketed more than £700k in a Boots gift card scam has been jailed.
Robert Bell, 37, took advantage of a loophole in the cards, getting them for free by filling out an order form and asking for them to be loaded with credit.
But he had no intention of paying the cash back, and raked in a whopping £736,000 before being jailed for two years and nine months.
Glasgow Sheriff Court heard that a postman recalled a series of “special deliveries” to Bell’s firm run from a large hut at a business park in Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire.
Brazen Bell was finally arrested after attempting to get his hands on another £150,000 of gift cards, and carried out the scam for three months in November 2017.
Prosecutor Hannah Terrance told jurors: "Bell had no intention for paying for any of this credit.
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"He exploited a loophole and made false pretences as part of the fraudulent scam.
"His postman described his business premises as a hut.
"All he could tell was that Bell was there receiving regular special deliveries."
Bell got his hands on gift cards worth up to £7,500,and spent more than half a million pounds of the gift cards across 30,000 transactions.
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The court heard that Bell was stopped in November 2017 after failing to get another £150k worth of the gift cards according to the Daily Record.
Boots have never received any cash back from the fraudster, and were unable to cancel the rest of the cards due to their unique serial numbers.
Bell told cops he had applied for the cards in order to give them as a gift to staff and as a "customer incentive".
David Adams, defending, told jurors that Bell was unaware about the system error at Boots.
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He added: "This was not a crime. Boots allowed him to do this due to an error on their part.
"His business had cash flow problems, his customers were not paying him and he could not pay the suppliers – one of which was Boots."
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