A benefits fraudster who sold counterfeit designer fashion through Instagram has insisted that the £158,000 discovered hidden among baby clothes represented her children’s savings.

Megan Carney-Borrowman marketed fake items branded as Chanel, Burberry and Versace to thousands of social media followers.

The mother built a lucrative online operation, with bank accounts connected to her receiving more than £4million over a four-year period.

Carney-Borrowman, a mother of four from Southport, Merseyside, was assisted by her 35-year-old husband, Jordan Borrowman. Her mother, 65-year-old Sandra Carney, and longtime business associate Adam Yaffe, 53, were also involved.

All four defendants were sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court this week. Carney-Borrowman received four years and three months in prison after admitting conspiracy to commit trademark offences.

The couple’s home was first raided in November 2022 after Chanel alerted anti-counterfeiting investigators to the suspected operation. Neither was at home, and both later claimed they did not have their phones.

Borrowman told officers that his phone had been lost and was never found. However, the court heard that the device was used again after his arrest.

Carney-Borrowman also attempted to mislead investigators by handing over her son’s phone and presenting it as her own. Her actual handset was later recovered, and messages on it helped police establish Yaffe’s role in the scheme.

A review of Carney-Borrowman’s accounts after her first arrest revealed substantial cash withdrawals. When officers searched the property again in April 2023, they found her phone concealed on top of a curtain rail in the main bedroom.

Prosecutor James Rae told the court that Carney-Borrowman had tried to stop officers from searching her baby’s bedroom. He said the reason became clear when police discovered £158,000 in cash hidden inside. The money was seized despite her claim that it was made up of savings withdrawn for her children.

The phone became a key piece of evidence. Investigators found a huge number of messages showing, in the prosecution’s words, that she was selling counterfeit products and using a drop-shipping arrangement, with overseas suppliers sending orders directly to customers.

Police identified eight business bank accounts and 18 personal accounts linked to Carney-Borrowman, including some held in the names of her young children. Between 2019 and 2023, almost £4,319,952.73 passed through the business accounts, while £753,419.50 was transferred into her personal accounts.

She was arrested for benefit fraud in May 2024. A Department for Work and Pensions investigation concluded that she had fraudulently obtained about £68,300 by failing to declare self-employment income, the purchase of two properties, her living arrangements with Borrowman and their shared assets.

Carney-Borrowman was also accused of making a false insurance claim after telling Halifax that she had lost an expensive Rolex during a night out in Blackpool. When officers from the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit visited her home, they saw her wearing a watch with the same serial number as the one reported missing.

Body-worn footage released by the NWROCU captures an officer questioning her about the Rolex. Asked whether she was wearing one, Carney-Borrowman replied: “It’s not real… you’re not taking it off me. It was for my 30th birthday.”

When instructed to surrender the watch, she said: “It’s actually my mum and dad who got it for me so I could probably get a receipt.” After initially disputing its authenticity, she was asked directly whether it was genuine and confirmed that it was.

Mr Rae described Carney-Borrowman as the “prime mover” behind the criminal operation, saying she had been “clearly supported and encouraged by her mother”. Borrowman was considered a major beneficiary of the counterfeit profits and had helped sell, package and transport products, although the court heard he played a supporting role. Yaffe was said to have encouraged, cautioned and advised Carney-Borrowman.

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Defending Carney-Borrowman, Nicholas Clarke said her remorse was not driven by self-pity but reflected “the genuine fear she has for her children”. He told the court that all four children had developmental concerns and that the youngest required continuing appointments at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

Mr Clarke said: ‘Her children revolve around her and most of her waking life is dealing with them…the reports set out the concerns she has about all of the children being looked after by others.’

He told the court that Carney-Borrowman had PTSD following the tragic death of a child in April 2022. The prosecution said that Carney-Borrowman had lied to the author of her original pre-sentence report and claimed she only started selling counterfeit goods as a result of her daughter’s death when she felt unable to engage in conventional employment.

Michael Lavery, for Carney, said his client had worked her whole adult life, had carried out several selfless acts ‘over a number of years to assist people less fortunate than her’ and had supported her two daughters; both of whom had children of their own.

He told the court: ‘It seems to anyone approaching this case that this is a mother doing her best for a daughter who has a number of problems. There is no more a person than a mother who wants to help her child, misguided and naïve it has been.’

Richard Vardon, representing Borrowman, said: ‘It may be the position that the mother of the children cannot care for them in the immediate future so they would be more impacted if this defendant was to go to prison as well.’

Andy Evans, for Yaffe, told the court his client’s offending was characterised by his relationship with Carney-Borrowman. ‘He assisted her with things mundane, things tragic and difficult, and things happier, such as becoming her wedding photographer,’ he said.

Sentencing, Judge Louise Brandon said: ‘The business operated through Instagram accounts and WhatsApp ordering systems with multiple bank accounts, corporate structures, direct overseas suppliers, drop-ship methods, concealed payments and efforts to avoid detection.’

The judge added: ‘Involvement at any level of counterfeiting are grave offences. You all contributed. It is a consequence of your arrests that your families will also suffer from your criminality.’

Judge Brandon told Carney-Borrowman: ‘I can’t accept that your customers all believed they were buying counterfeit goods. If that was the case we would not be here today…You feel you are the victim. Your actions caused your children to see the police in your own home. You have no one else to blame for the impact on your children. You seem unable or unwilling to grasp that your situation is entirely of your own making.’

Carney-Borrowman, 35, and of Birdling Drive in Southport, was sentenced to four years and three months for conspiracy to commit trademark offences, conspiracy to launder money, benefit fraud, and conspiracy to defraud.

Borrowman, 35, and of the same address, received 12 months, suspended for 18 months and 120 hours of unpaid work after admitting conspiracy to commit trademark offences, conspiracy to launder money and benefit fraud.

Carney, 65, and of Court Road was handed two years, suspended for 18 months with 120 hours of unpaid work after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit trademark offences, conspiracy to acquire criminal property, aiding and abetting fraud and conspiracy to defraud.

And Yaffe walked free from court with an 18-month community order and 120 hours of unpaid work after he admitted conspiracy to commit trademark offences and conspiracy to acquire criminal property.

Speaking after sentencing, Detective Inspector Adam Williams of the NWROCU, said: ‘This was a sophisticated and long-running trademarks and money laundering offence which generated significant profits through the sale of counterfeit designer goods while simultaneously exploiting public funds and defrauding an insurance company.

‘The defendants went to considerable lengths to disguise their offending, but detailed financial investigation and partnership working enabled us to uncover the full extent of their criminality.

‘Counterfeit goods are far from a victimless crime. The proceeds often support wider organised criminality, while consumers are deceived into purchasing products they believe to be genuine. This case demonstrates our commitment to pursuing offenders who seek to profit through fraud and protecting both businesses and the public from financial harm.’

When Kristin Logan learned she had stage-four ovarian cancer, doctors warned that her prospects for survival were poor.

What she did not anticipate was receiving information about how to end her life before she had even been referred to an oncologist to discuss possible treatment.

Soon after her diagnosis in September 2023, the Canadian received pamphlets in the mail about the country’s medical assistance in dying, or MAiD, programme.

Kristin, 46, had spent months trying to secure medical attention while doctors repeatedly dismissed her symptoms. Now, she says, the healthcare system appeared to be ‘setting’ her up to die.

‘My husband and I just looked at each other,’ Kristin told the Daily Mail. ‘It was basically like getting mail that repeated what my doctor had said: “This will end your life,” and then, “Here are your options for that”.’

By the time she received the diagnosis, Kristin was already gravely unwell. Fluid had built up in her lungs, she was experiencing intense pain and her weight was falling rapidly.

A dual Canadian-American citizen and US Air Force veteran, she decided that leaving Canada was her best chance of getting the care she needed to survive.

In what she describes as a period of ‘extreme medical duress’, Kristin was too weak to walk when she was taken aboard a ferry from British Columbia. Her husband and daughter watched from the pier.

‘I didn’t know if I was going to see my husband and daughter again. They didn’t know if they were ever going to see me alive again,’ she recalled.

The events that followed, Kristin says, exposed what she believes are deep failings in Canada’s healthcare system — and showed how MAiD can erode hope for patients still fighting to live.

‘It took me years, to be honest, to register how cruel and inhumane that was, and how dystopian it is,’ she said. ‘They had no business sending that kind of information to people… It’s extremely disturbing.’

After leaving the ferry, Kristin arrived in Vancouver, where her parents collected her and drove her across the US border to Seattle.

She was then enrolled in the Veterans Affairs healthcare system, which provides medical benefits to US military veterans, and began receiving cancer treatment.

Kristin says the difference in approach was immediately apparent. Despite the seriousness of her illness, American healthcare workers were determined to pursue every possible avenue to extend her life.

‘They’re all plugged into that mentality of, “We’re going to keep you alive. We’re going to keep it going”,’ she said.

‘That’s very different from being looked in the face and told, “You’re going to die”. It’s also very different from immediately getting information about your end-of-life options.’

Canada operates one of the world’s broadest euthanasia programmes. Its government-funded MAiD system became legal in 2016.

The programme permits terminally ill people to request death administered by a doctor or nurse, typically through an injection. In 2021, the law was expanded to cover people who were not terminally ill but had an incurable illness, condition or disability.

Its expansion has, however, sparked fierce backlash among conservative politicians, medical professionals and disability advocacy groups, who fear assisted dying is becoming a substitute for proper healthcare. 

Doctors and provincial authorities in recent years have reported euthanasia deaths among those seeking the procedure because they were poor, homeless or unable to seek the government support they needed to live. 

Kristin says, in her case, she felt she was being subtly pressured to undergo MAiD.

‘I felt pushed to accept what seemed the inevitability of my demise and contribute to society and my family by speeding that along. As if it was selfish of me to want to live,’ she says. 

‘When the institution is giving you information about dying when they’re not giving you information about how they’re going to treat you, when they’re going to treat you, or how it’s going to work out, that leaves you feeling like they don’t want you to get treatment.’

She adds that MAiD is particularly being ‘shoved’ on the disabled or ill to remove a perceived burden from a strained healthcare system.

‘They don’t need, and should not be getting, a constant reminder from the government that they ought to kill themselves.’ 

‘It just sucks the hope out of the room completely… I think that is the worst thing you can make a cancer patient feel,’ she adds.

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Early last year, Kristin and her family moved permanently to the US. 

She says she no longer felt ‘safe’ in Canada after her healthcare experience, so chose to build a new life across the border.

Now Kristin, who was once told she only had months to live, is in remission. 

To mark how far she has come, Kristin and her husband, Donovan James, climbed one of the highest mountain peaks in Texas’ Big Bend National Park. 

At the summit, with the vast Texas landscape surrounding them, Donovan filmed a video condemning Canada’s healthcare system.  

‘Here we are, we’re sitting on top of the world,’ he says in the clip on social media. 

‘[Kristin] still has the strength and stamina to hike two hours up to the top of this mountain peak… something that would never have happened had we stayed in Canada. She’d be dead.’

‘This is evil… and Canadians have made this their culture that it’s normal and OK to just go kill yourself because a doctor says there is no hope,’ he continued. 

‘Where is the death? Do you see death? I don’t see death, I see somebody fighting.’ 

Kristin is currently taking part in a maintenance drug trial, which she says is ‘very promising’.

But while Kristin chose to keep fighting for her life, she says her experience has left her deeply critical of the system she believes failed her when it was needed most. 

‘If the government is responsible for healthcare and they are not providing it in a medically reasonable fashion — in terms of time and quality — and then they turn around and offer medical assistance in dying, and you can get that much faster than you can get care and treatment, that’s a problem… It feels very sinister,’ she says. 

‘I think the government should be taking a hard look at why they are faster to kill their citizens than to help them and treat them. Fix the healthcare system before you keep expanding a nicer death.’

MAiD came under fire last month after a Canadian woman claimed her Christian grandmother was euthanised against her will. 

After taking a cognitive test, designed to ascertain whether she was sound of mind enough to consent to MAiD, Brigitte Stegemann, 83, ‘got every question wrong’, her granddaughter Brigitte Kranendonk told the Daily Mail. 

Just 48 hours after she wept uncontrollably at the notion of MAiD, Stegemann is said to have died with her hands clasped in prayer. She was covered in her own blood due to a botched first attempt at connecting the IV, administered by a nurse allegedly not wearing gloves.

Kranendonk is appealing to the Chief Coroner’s Office in Ontario, as well as the Patient Ombudsman and Belleville Police, in a bid to ascertain whether what happened the morning of July 10 at The Pearl care home in Cannifton was legal.

Bereaved and distraught, she claims MAiD practitioners took advantage of her grandmother’s vulnerability to perform the procedure, which she alleges was carried out without express consent.

‘She was a vulnerable human being, and they saw an opportunity,’ Kranendonk said. 

She suspects the MAiD practitioners were ideologically motivated, and believes the chain of events leading up to the procedure should be investigated.

Medically assisted suicide in Canada is responsible for nearly one in ten deaths in some parts of the country, according to the New York Post. 

Kristin suggests the number could be much lower if healthcare were more adequate.

‘I think the government should be taking a hard look at why they are faster to kill their citizens than to help them and treat them,’ she said.

‘How many of those deaths could have been avoided if people had received timely care, timely medical imaging, timely testing, and had a family doctor? Had they received the care they needed, how many people would have been in that position?’ 

‘I’m sure they would have rather chosen to have timely treatment and care. You left them without that, and now they were suffering, and that was the only way to end the suffering. That’s not humane, and that’s not dignified.’