UK woman posed as Grouville homeowner to secure £25k loan

Monday 01 August 2022

A 48-year-old woman with no connection to the island has been spared jail after falsifying documents and lying so she could take out a £25,000 loan in Jersey to get herself out of a "desperate situation".

Instead, Nicola Rama - also known as McCaig - was handed 180 hours' community service.

Although defence Advocate Julian Gollop did not go into all the details, he told the Magistrate’s Court his client who lives in Kent had lost her job, and with it her home, and was now estranged from her two sons.

The lawyer went on to say this "perfect storm of one traumatic event after another" Rama  to act in a way that was "totally out of character" and make "the very foolhardy and stupid decision" to forge documents and lie so she could obtain a loan.

Pictured: Rama was sentenced in the Magistrate's Court on Friday.

She told the company she needed the money to pay for "kitchen improvements". It was to be paid back over a period of 60 months.

Rama claimed she lived in and owned a £650,000 house in Grouville and had paid off the mortgage.

To secure the loan, Rama forged a phone bill to show she lived at the property and a bank statement to pretend she had a balance of £4,200. 

She also told the company she had not taken out a loan in the past two decades, when in fact she had taken out a £30,000 loan in the Isle of Man and had not paid any of it back.

When staff at the Jersey company contacted Rama and quizzed her about the Isle of Man loan Rama told them: "That is the most bizarre thing. It has nothing to do with me."

Staff at the loan company also noticed other discrepancies such as the addresses on the phone bill and bank statement being in a different font from the rest of the document, and alerted the police.

Sentencing Rama, Relief Magistrate David Le Cornu, told her she "had come within a whisker of a custodial sentence".

He said he’d only be persuaded otherwise because of Rama’s previous good character and because Advocate Gollop had argued a change in her personal circumstances made community service more appropriate. She’ll carry out the work in Kent.

Rama has now found work in the UK as a primary school teacher. She’ll be paid £39,000 a year. Her husband has also found work, again in the UK. He’ll start his training as a prison officer soon, and will be on £40,000. It is also likely the sale of their UK property will realise in the region of £180,000.

Advocate Gollop said this will be used to pay off the Isle of Man loan.