A glamorous British mother facing jail over an alleged food poisoning scam in Majorca has brushed off the claims after saying she has ‘nothing to hide’.
Laura Holmes Cameron, from Essex, is one of eight people accused of convincing tourists to lie about being unwell so they could claim compensation from all-inclusive hotels.
Spanish detectives say the alleged plot, which came to light in 2017, saw the gang target three hotel groups and it could have cost the businesses up to £9.6million.
The 44-year-old was charged with aggravated fraud and membership of a criminal gang and was arrested in the same year.
She and her brother, Marc Cameron Grinsted, have been accused of being the ‘ringleaders’ of the gang and will stand trial later this year, along with six other Brits.
Speaking for the first time on Facebook, Holmes Cameron dismissed the accusations against her as ‘complete drivel’ and slammed the ‘horrendous treatment by Spanish police officers.
British mother Laura Holmes Cameron is facing jail over an alleged food poisoning scam in Majorca
Laura is one of eight people accused of convincing tourists to lie about being unwell so they could claim compensation from all-inclusive hotels
Pregnant Laura Cameron is seen arriving at court in Majorca, September 7, 2017
She wrote: ‘I’m not here to go into fine details, but to make it really clear I’ve got absolutely nothing to hide.
‘Everybody has a past. I’ve always strived to become a better person day in, day out.
‘I was in a huge amount of debt. One morning I woke up and was arrested.
‘There was an investigation, my passport was taken away. That was horrendous. I was guilty until proven innocent. I had to keep going and checking in with them.
‘I’m in a situation where I’ve been accused of something, my face is over every newspaper.
‘I’m not here for a pity party but people need to understand what I’ve been through.’
She added: ‘Even if [the allegation] was real, collecting some data and stuff, it’s not like I’m a paedophile or a murderer or something. It’s all complete drivel.’
‘I’ve got nothing to hide. I was arrested, I went to prison for three nights. The court case is still going on. So what? Who cares?’
Holmes Cameron also bragged about earning ‘$10,000 a month’ from pyramid scheme Manifest FX over the last 18 months.
Laura Holmes Cameron with her husband Stuart Holmes
The alleged criminal gang was accused of targeting all-inclusive hotels in Majorca (pictured) with the bogus claims
She continued: ‘I could either sit there and feel sorry for myself, knowing I didn’t deserve what had happened to me, or I could get loud and proud and help other people and turn around my life for me and my family, and that’s what I decided to do.
‘I decided I was going to go all-in with the network marketing industry and I worked hard for quite a few months and didn’t get that many results, but I persevered day and night.’
Network marketing is another word for pyramid selling. Studies have shown that most people who join such companies lose money, and the chances of making money are statistically very remote.
Pyramid schemes create tiers of salespeople who are encouraged to recruit their own networks of salespeople. Each tier earns commission from sales by the tier beneath them, with most of the money being funnelled to the people at the top.
More recently, Holmes Cameron has been urging women to sign up to another subscription scheme, which flogs package holidays.
The blonde ‘digital creator’ – whose married name is Laura Joyce – was arrested over the alleged food poisoning scam in 2017.
Six other Britons have also been charged and named as Ryan Bridges, Simon Robert Flanagan, Tegan Jewel Sumerlee, Susan Amanda Lyle, Nicola Marie Sanderson, and Peter Carl Murphy.
Bridges has been described as ‘one of the people tasked in England with processing the false claims’.
In February, after a seven-year investigation, Holmes Cameron and Cameron Grinstead were told that public prosecutors had decided not to pursue charges.
Laura Holmes Cameron and husband Stuart Holmes’ bar Heroes in Puerto Portals, was raided by police in 2017
Laura Holmes Cameron with her husband Stuart Holmes
Spanish authorities decided it was not possible to determine the authors of the fraud or pinpoint the transfer of assets from the alleged scam.
However, lawyers acting on behalf of the three hotel groups have continued to pursue their own legal action.
Lawyers for one group – Hotels Mac – previously confirmed in an indictment that it wants an eight-year prison sentence for the siblings and five-and-half years for most of the other suspects.
Meanwhile, the Majorca Hoteliers Federation has called for the 44-year-old to be jailed for six-and-a-half years if convicted – five if she is found guilty of aggravated fraud, and another one-and-a-half if convicted of belonging to a criminal gang.
In documents seen by the Sun in December last year, the organisation called for her brother to be jailed for five years if convicted – four years for fraud and 12 months for membership of a criminal gang.
It said Bridges should get the same sentence as Cameron Grinstead if found guilty, as he is the one accused of processing the fake food poisoning claims while knowing they were not genuine.
The organisation is also demanding that the other Britons should be jailed for three years and nine months if found guilty, with all members made to pay compensation.
It said: ‘The gang specialised in obtaining the details of British tourists in all-inclusive hotels in Majorca, it convinced… [them] to falsely claim they had been ill during their stay in one of those hotels… to claim compensation in the UK.’
It added: ‘The amount of compensation obtained in the UK with the consequent damage it caused tour operators and hotels significantly exceeded £176,000.’
Reports at the time of Holmes Cameron’s arrest in September 2017 described hoteliers’ losses as a result of the scam as ‘multi-million.’
Peter Carl Murphy (left) is among the other suspects alleged to have been involved
Holmes Cameron’s lawyer Gabriel Llado said after his client appeared in court in May 2018 in a closed hearing that she had admitted to passing on the names and phone numbers of holidaymakers for payment but insisted it was part of a pure market research exercise.
He insisted neither Holmes Cameron or any of the so-called ‘claims farmers’ she used to gather data of tourists she passed on to others in the UK, encouraged them to get chemist’s receipts so they could make fake food poisoning claims as police and hoteliers’ representatives have claimed.
And he claimed his client had spent just a few months doing it and stopped because she was earning very little.
Holmes Cameron’s mother Deborah Cameron was previously held in the probe but freed with no further action was taken.
The wealthy mother was also held at the luxury villa in upmarket Bendinat the pair then shared near the glamorous Majorcan port of Puerto Portals which police raided, but was freed before she went to court.
After Holmes Cameron was arrested, it emerged her Magaluf bar Playhouse had been identified as the venue 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 bar crawls in the party resort after regional governors described the ‘outrageous’ sex scenes as giving the area and women ‘a terrible image’ and promised to ‘stop it whichever way’ they could.
Holmes Cameron, who was not at her bar when the incident occurred, shut Playhouse down soon after.