POLICE have told victims of a conwoman she will not be prosecuted - because she does not have any money to confiscate.
Neelam Desai, 34, tricked men out of tens out thousands of pounds through a dating website scam which included pretending she was raising money to fund life-saving surgery for a sick child.
Those men, one of whom contemplated suicide after losing £35,500, have been informed she will face no further action.
Desai, of Beulah Grove, Selhurst, was arrested in April last year on suspicion of ten counts of fraud by false representation following an Advertiser investigation.
Weeks later she was jailed for 30 months after pleading guilty to a series of frauds separate to those this paper had linked her to.
Desai answered bail earlier this month in relation to our allegations, which she denies, and was told she would not be charged.
The police declined to comment on the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) decision, which has been formally challenged by at least two of her outraged victims.
Amar, 33, who was tricked out of £17,176 in a scam that continued while Desai was on bail awaiting sentencing, has passed the Advertiser an email he received from police informing him his case had been dropped.
The email police sent to one of Desai's victims
Detective Constable Stephen Hall wrote: "It is with sadness I bring you news of the final decision from the Crown Prosecution Service. They have decided there will be no further action against Neelam Desai on all matters."
Summarising the reasons, DC Hall added: "She received a 30 month custodial sentence, and was unlikely to receive any more should these new offences have been tried.
"A financial investigation revealed she has no assets whatsoever, and therefore no punitive punishment was possible either."
Amar, of west London, said: "What sort of message does this send out to victims of crime?
"How can it be right that she cannot be prosecuted because she has already gone to prison for something else?
"I think they want to save money. They don't want to pay to go back to court and hold her responsible for what she did. It's all about the money.
"After what happened to me I was told [by the police] that I wouldn't get my money back. I took that on the chin because I thought she would at least get punished for it. Now I'm told she's going to get away with it.
"This has opened my eyes about the legal system in this country. Even if you do know who the criminal is, they don't do anything. It's going to deter victims from coming forward."
The Advertiser began to unravel Desai's lies in March last year after being contacted by a 36-year-old man from Leicester who had been conned out of £35,500 by a woman calling herself Nisha Patel, who first contacted him in December 2012 through Shaadi.com, an Asian marriage website.
He emptied the joint £15,000 life-savings he held with his father and took out a bank loan of £9,000 in belief he was paying for holidays with the woman he had fallen for - trips that never happened.
Bank statements passed to the Advertiser show the vast majority of the cash was paid into an account under the name N. Desai, who "Nisha" said was her travel agent.
Neelam Desai arrives at court last May ahead of being sentenced
In fact, "Nisha Patel" was the name Desai did business under after being declared bankrupt in 2009, and she was sending the man photographs taken from another woman's Facebook page.
The scam, which cost him his business, lasted more than a year and was only investigated by the police when the Advertiser became involved.
Desai attempted to block our investigating by alleging our reporter was "persecuting" her. The police gave him a harassment warning and, after they rejected our complaint, he has now appealed to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
The Advertiser spoke to a second man who was conned during the same period, again after being approached by a woman on Shaadi.com.
He was offered the opportunity to buy an iPhone, an iPad and Currys vouchers by a woman calling herself Rima Vaghela. He made payments totalling £950 to 'N Desouza' but the items never arrived. While demanding his money back the woman accidentally emailed him from the email Neelam.Desai. Both men were sent pictures of the same woman.
The Advertiser then traced that woman to an address in London. It transpired her husband was in the same year group as Desai in John Ruskin College, Selsdon.
We then tracked down a third victim who handed £4,000 to a woman who called herself Rima Vaghela, who claimed she was raising money for homeless children after contacting him on Shaadi.com. The woman he spoke to over several months was not real and neither was the charity appeal. The hospital she said she was employed by could find no record she had worked there.
The 30-year-old realised he was being conned when he Googled 'Rima Vaghela' and found stories about Desai on our website.
Amar, the fourth victim to contact the Advertiser, passed us extensive evidence showing how he was conned out of £17,176 after being contacted by Desai, posing as another woman, on Shaadi.com on January 6.
Her scam included pretending to raise money for a children's charity and that a friend needed £1,900 to fund surgery for a seriously ill child.
His evidence included a transcript of hundreds of messages sent to him from Desai's mobile phone, which showed that, on the morning Desai pleaded guilty to a series of travel business frauds totalling more than £230,000, she contacted Amar and asked for more money.
Texts Desai sent to one victim under the name "Nisha Patel"
To date police have not asked to see any of the evidence the Advertiser has collected, including a tape recording of a conversation between Amar and Desai in which she promises to repay the money she took. A Metropolitan Police spokesman could only say the investigating officer was "aware" of our material.
It is not known for certain what Desai did with the money she stole from the men she contacted through Shaadi.com but it is likely she used it to try and pay back victims of her travel business scam.
She was jailed for 30 months last May after pleading guilty to fraud, handling stolen goods, doing business while bankrupt and breaching a suspended sentence.
Desai offered customers of her discount travel business cheap flights and holidays but when those trips fell through she tried to pay them back by ripping off two businessmen and writing fraudulent cheques from her mother's bank account.
She had already been convicted of dishonestly using her mother's home to obtain security on two loans.
Police confiscated just £320 from her following a hearing at Croydon Crown Court in December last year after an investigation found she had no assets to seize.
At least two victims of Desai's honey trap con have asked the CPS to review its decision.
A CPS spokeswoman said : "Criminal charges can only be brought against a person if there is sufficient evidence against them to provide a realistic prospect of conviction and it is in the public interest to prosecute.
"Following the original decision to take no further action this case has been reviewed under the Victim's Right to Review scheme and this process has not yet been exhausted.
"Consequently there remains a potential for an appeal against the decision in this case therefore we are not able to comment further until the process has been completed."
The case against Desai
THE Advertiser has compelling evidence that Neelam Desai was behind the dating website scams. The police have not, to date, asked to see any of it.
- Transcripts of hundreds of text messages sent to two victims from a mobile phone number given to the Press Complaints Commission by Desai
- A third victim received text messages from that number
- Recordings of telephone calls made to the Advertiser, and a victim, by a woman who admitted to being Neelam Desai
- Four victims listened to recordings of calls the Advertiser has received and independently confirmed the voice on the phone is the same woman who conned them
- Bank statements from a 36-year-old from Leicester who was conned out of £35,500 by a woman calling herself Nisha Patel, the name Desai was convicted of doing business under while bankrupt
- In his case, the man transferred money to an account under the name N. Desai
- The man later hired a private detective who traced the mobile number "Nisha" was using to Desai and her Selhurst home address
- Another victim, from London, was conned by a woman calling herself "Rima Vaghela", who accidentally sent him an email from the account "Neelam.Desai"
- Three of the victims were sent pictures of the same woman, who was we identified as the wife of a man Desai was in the same year at John Ruskin College, Selsdon
- A victim was told Niraj Dhokia, from Nationwide, would sort one transaction. Desai pleaded guilty to handling stolen goods, namely Mr Dhokia's chequebook
