Crooked travel agent, 37, funded her own luxury foreign holidays using customers' money after being freed from jail over £10,000 scam

A crooked travel agent jailed after fleecing holidaymakers was caught using customers' money to fund her own luxury breaks again, a court heard today.Rebecca Waterfall, 37, conned bosses out of more than £10,000 while working at a Cheshire travel agency, spending the cash on holidays for friends to boost her popularity.She was initially spared jail, only to be locked up for breaching the terms of her suspended sentence.But she was back in court again today after admitting a new scam involving holidays advertised on Facebook.Once she had obtained customers' bank card details, Waterfall instead used them to pay for trips abroad for herself – one at a luxury hotel costing £3,467.She was motivated by wanting to give her family a 'nice life', Manchester Magistrates' Court was told. Another customer was fleeced for £1,136 and Waterfall also laundered £3,530 into a third-party account, it heard.Some victims received text messages telling them there had been 'errors' and the payments would go on their holidays. Travel agent Rebecca Waterfall, 37, admitted conning customers by using their money to fund luxury holidays for herself Waterfall - pictured on a previous holiday - was 'trying to show her family she had the means to give them a nice life', a court heardSayed Shah, prosecuting, said customers believed they could 'trust' Waterfall to provide their holiday accommodation.But some became 'suspicious' and contacted the company's office.She was eventually exposed after booking a holiday to Antalya, in Turkey, using one customer's bank card details but her own email address.Waterfall, of Salford, previously pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud by false representation and one count of money laundering between January and May 2023.Kerry Morgan, defending, asked magistrates to deal with the case, saying a suspended sentence could be imposed for Waterfall's crimes.'This wasn't sophisticated, there was no way she wasn't going to be found out,' she said.'She was trying to show her family she had the means to give them a nice life.'Magistrates pointed out the impact on her victims after Waterfall claimed, in a pre-sentence report, that she had 'never really understood the value of money'. Waterfall shared images of long-haul holidays before being convicted of fraud in 2017 Waterfall kayaking in Australia - a trip paid for using her firm's credit card, a court heard in 2017They opted to send the case to Manchester Crown Court, where she will be sentenced next month.Waterfall has previous convictions for fraud and was previously in court in 2017.That hearing was told how one family's dream holiday to Walt Disney World was left in tatters when they were pulled out of check-in queue by fraud investigators as they were about to fly from Manchester Airport to Florida.They had handed £5,250 to Waterfall but were left out of pocket after they learned she was a scammer who had used her employer's credit card to pay for the trip.She also fraudulently used the credit card to pay for cut-price holidays to Cuba and Switzerland for other family friends, passing on the losses to the travel company, as well as a trip to Australia with her boyfriend.Pictures on Facebook had shown the mother-of-two kayaking, jungle trekking, meeting a koala bear, swimming with dolphins and enjoying a helicopter ride.A judge at the time said she had 'robbed Peter to pay Paul' in the 'travel agency equivalent of a Ponzi scheme'.A nine-month sentence was activated in 2019 after she breached the terms of a suspended sentence.Waterfall admitted a further five counts of fraud in 2021.She had used a customer's credit card to book a luxury £1,400 holiday to Menorca while working at a Manchester hotel in 2018, and also spent £148 on shopping and paid £515 to a currency firm.On that occasion she was handed a community order after a judge said it would be 'wrong' to send her to prison.