GUILTY PLEA | 

Credit card fraudster to be deported back home to Romania in new year

Iliescu pleaded guilty to one count of fraud, committed between January and March

Today at 16:10

A credit card fraudster has been handed an 18-month prison sentence.

Judge Roseanne McCormick KC told Lulea Iliescu she would spend half the term in jail and half on licence.

But because of time already served, the 34-year-old’s wish to be deported back to her native Romania is likely to be granted in the new year.

Iliescu pleaded guilty to one count of fraud, committed between January and March.

Her 50-year-old former husband Selvis Sali was charged alongside her but failed to attend a later court date.

A warrant has since been issued for his arrest.

Antrim Crown Court was told staff at the Rosspark Hotel, outside Ballymena, raised the alarm after IIiescu paid the £638 bill for a five-day stay with someone else’s credit card.

The police subsequently arrested she and Sali at the Hilton Hotel in Templepatrick.

A search of their vehicle and room uncovered credit cards not in their names and documents connected with fraud.

An A4 notebook was found to contain pages “filled with postcodes, addresses, phone numbers, email address, dates of births and names of what police suspect are victims of identity fraud”.

Detectives later became aware of a victim who reported “that an unknown person had redirected his mail correspondence to a different address without his knowledge”.

“He had since found out that numerous credit accounts, including loans and credit cards, had been opened in his name and without his permission,” a prosecution lawyer said.

They included a £4,500 Halifax loan and a credit card debt of £1,700.

CCTV identified Iliescu as having used the card.

She claimed she went along with her husband’s frauds “out of fear” and that he would attack her if she refused.

But a prosecution lawyer said: “Of note is that they were married when she was 17

“Sali (has since) remarried. However, found in Iliescu’s wallet was a passport-sized picture of Sali along with a Revolut card in his wife’s name.”