British Woman Punished After Defrauding Osaze Odemwingie & Others of Over N60m

Nigerian footballer, Osaze Odemwingie

 

A fraudster who stole over £130,000 (N55million) from Osaze Odemwingie, Premier League footballers, a top manager, and two millionaire businessmen has been jailed for three years and eight months.

 

The woman identified as Claire Liddle, 41, conned wealthy clients including Stoke City striker Peter Odemwingie, Liverpool defender Andre Wisdom, and former Celtic boss Tony Mowbray by offering to organise their luxury holidays.

 

Although she was spared jail after admitting the £82,000 scam in 2014, however, she went ahead to steal another £22,000 from the chairman of telecommunications giant Lebara. She then stole £33,000 from the boss of sales solutions firm Flixmedia.

 

The woman blew the money on expensive Rolex watch, alcohol, partying and luxury lifestyle.

 

Revealing how the incident took place, The Sun UK gathered that in 2012 Liddle had she set up a concierge service for wealthy individuals and gave presentations at football clubs by pretending to be working for Solutions Lifestyle.

 

Prosecutor Michael Morris told the court: “Although she wasn’t employed by them she used their name and passed herself off as being from Solutions Lifestyle to offer luxury holidays at discounts.

“She arranged to attend Premiership football clubs to provide presentations.”

 

Liddle swindled Odemwingie out of £15,000 after the striker handed over his bank details to organise his Miami honeymoon in 2012. She also stole at least £7,500 from Liverpool defender Andre Wisdom, who is currently out on loan to Austrian club Red Bull Salzburg.

 

Claire Liddle who stole from Nigerian Osaze Odemwingie, footballers and managers

 

Former West Brom and Celtic boss Tony Mowbray was stung for £30,000 after asking Liddle to arrange a holiday to Dubai for him and his family.

 

Liddle claimed to have booked them into a top hotel but when they arrived they were told it had not been paid for and were forced to put the £13,000 bill on his credit card.

 

She then got Mowbray to hand over another £17,000 by claiming that the refund would be rolled into the family’s £30,000 summer holiday.

 

Two other wealthy clients were also targeted during the scam totalling £82,561.

In April 2014 Liddle was sentenced to two years imprisonment suspended for two years with 150 hours unpaid work after admitting fraud.

 

Liddle then got a job working as a PA for Yoganathan Ratheessan, the chief executive and chairman of Lebara.

 

But after being dismissed three months later on 20 February 2015 she continued to use his card details to steal a total of £22,897.

 

Liddle was arrested in June 2015 and was on bail for that allegation when she fraudulently used a company credit card while working as a PA for Flixmedia between August 2015 and February 2016.

 

Liddle pleaded guilty to two counts of theft in relation to the Lebara and the Flixmedia cases. She also admitted being in breach of the earlier suspended sentence for fraud.

 

Liddle wept in court as she was sentenced to 12 months for Odemwingie, Wisdom, and Mowbray.

 

She was handed 16 month consecutive jail terms on each of the other two scams, making a total of 44 months.