A fraudster who conned holidaymakers into paying for fake Covid-19 'fit to fly' certificates has been sentenced to two years in prison.

Saranjeet Trina Kandola, 41, of South View Road, traded as 'Travel Test Solutions Ltd', and charged up to £149 for face PCR tests.

Having advertised on social media, she visited customers homes to take swabs that should have been tested at a laboratory. However, no tests were ever carried out and the Covid 'free' certificates she issued were worthless.

Over 17 days Kandola supplied 47 fake passes and obtained nearly £5,000, only stopping (on December 21 2020) when she found out she was being investigated by Warwickshire Trading Standards.

In order to hide her identity Kandola used a PayPal account in the name of a former partner. She set up a website using a fake name and started a limited company in the name of another person.

She also used a fake Care Quality Commission number on the certificates.

At Coventry Magistrates Court on Wednesday 13 April 2022, Kandola pleaded guilty to five offences contrary to the Fraud Act 2006.

She was then sentenced at Coventry Crown Court on Wednesday 11 May.

In mitigation Natalie Berman, representing Kandola, said that her client was extremely remorseful for her actions and accepted that the offences she had committed were, on any view, despicable against the background of what the world was experiencing at that time.

Ms Berman stated that Kandola was struggling financially to support her three children, and that she did a stupid thing which she knows will have huge implications for her and her children.

Sentencing Kandola, Judge Sylvia De Bertodano said: "In December 2020 the world was wracked by a deadly virus. 70,000 people died in the UK in 2020 and continued to die in their tens of thousands.

"A worse death count was only avoided by brutal lockdowns that separated families and ruined businesses.

"The effects and measures to contain it are incalculable. It was in this context that you chose to take advantage of the system by giving false results to make money.

"The seriousness is not the £5000 you obtained – I have no doubt had Trading Standards not become involved you would have carried on offending and made a great deal more.

"You determinedly undermined the restrictions put in place to stop the spread of the virus for your own financial gain. You were prepared to risk spreading this deadly disease to make money.

"It is difficult to think of a more cynical way to take advantage of the global crisis or a more contemptuous way to undermine the sacrifice made by others."

As well as her jail sentence Kandola was disqualified from being a company director for seven years and ordered to pay compensation to one of the victims and required to pay the victim surcharge.