Former Lake District hotel owner jailed for fraud (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Former Lake District hotel owner jailed for fraud

A HOTEL owner, who once helped win a Michelin star at one of the Lake District’s most exclusive hotels, has been sent to prison for defrauding his customers.

JAILED: Hotelier Nigel Parkin in 2008 after taking over The Mortal Man, Troutbeck

Nigel Parkin, 37, was jailed for eight months at Carlisle Crown Court after admitting taking more than £6,500 from guests’ credit cards in the two years he owned the Mortal Man at Troutbeck, near Windermere.

Parkin, who was previously general manager of the Samling Hotel at Windermere at the time it won its coveted Michelin star, was said by his lawyer to be now bankrupt and “a broken man”.

The court heard that Parkin took out a huge loan to buy the inn after he got sick of other people taking the credit for what he saw as his efforts at the Samling.

But he soon got into financial difficulties and started defrauding his customers to help pay staff wages and other expenses.

Prosecuting counsel Nicholas Courtney said he began milking funds from customers' credit card accounts, by using their card details to enter bogus transactions after they had gone home.

When his 30 victims got their credit card statements and realised what had happened they repeatedly tried to phone Parkin to complain, he said, but he consistently refused to speak to them, relying on his staff to “fend off disgruntled customers”.

Most of them had since been reim-bursed by their credit card companies, he said.

Parkin, now of Rose Cottage Lane, Windermere, pleaded guilty to 35 criminal offences including 33 charges of fraud, one of theft and one of transferring £6,612 of criminal property.

The charges of fraud that he admitted covered amounts ranging from £11.90 to £1,020.

All the offences were committed between February 2008 and March 2009.

In mitigation, defence advocate Max Saffan said Parkin’s problem was that he was “a hotelier rather than a businessman.

"He was an accomplished hotelier, but he got out of his depth.”

The hotel is now under new ownership.