A dance teacher who forged more than 100 exam certificates has been sentenced to two years in prison.
Amanda Brugnoli-Lines gave her dance students higher grades on forged certificates to bolster the reputation of her Dance Lines Academy, which has bases in Purley and Sanderstead.
She created the fraudulent documents between 2000 and 2008 replacing genuine certificates with false ones, most showing a higher grade.
Brugnoli-Lines forged 70 Royal Academy of Dance RAD certificates, 67 Imperial Society of Teaching of Dancing (ISTD) certificates, seven LAMDA certificates and one letter from Edexcel claiming a student's GCSE drama result had been raised from a B to an A.
Her deception came to light after mother Kim Wyatt queried her daughter's Level 2 Ballet result with the RAD and was told the certificate had been forged.
The court heard when Brugnoli-Lines discovered she had been exposed, the 36-year-old began a two-year smear campaign against others involved in her dance school to make herself look like a victim of malicious forgers.
She told police someone had stolen her identity to discredit her and steal her clients.
She threatened Mrs Wyatt with legal action and implicated two other mothers in the deception; Lorraine Ridley, who was interviewed under caution by the police, and Karen Doughty were implicated because they were on the Parent Teachers Association at the academy.
The teacher went as far as sending threatening poison pen messages and cards to her mother and her husband as well as poison texts to herself from anonymous mobile numbers, with allegations she was a child abuser.
She also sent a number of misleading emails to RAD and the parents of her pupils from fake email addresses to prove she was the victim and not the perpetrator of the fraud.
The court heard that parents and pupils who had trusted Brugnoli-Lines were left shocked by her actions.
Benjamin Douglas-Jones, prosecuting, said: “Some parents have not been able to tell their children of the fact that their certificates have been forged for fear of damaging their self esteem.”
The teacher closed down her dance academy in 2008 and lied about having a pharmaceutical qualification in order to get a job with Novo Nordisk. This fraudulent action landed her a salary and a brand new BMW.
Judge Critchley was unswayed by her pleas to avoid jail because she had to look after her seven-month-old, premature son Luka.
He said: “You gave birth this year to a child, you are married with a working husband and I am asked not to send you to prison because of that child's tender age.
“This is an unusual case and in my judgement it is a serious case because of the extent of the fraud and the amount of time it went on.”
He told her she had affected the lives with her “malicious” actions.
Waeem Mian, defending, said his client had “suffered” because of what she had done. He admitted that she was a “liar” and said: “She is the author of her own destruction.”
He told the court, her marriage to Anthony Brugnoli, a pensions advisor for Prudential, “hangs by the tiniest of threads” and that she had upset her parents and her family with her actions.
The mother shed tears as her defence lawyer spoke about her son and passed up photographs of the premature baby for the judge to look at.
Sentencing Judge Critchley said: “By your actions and behaviour you have caused considerable distress not just to parents and your dance pupils but to a female police officer who was deceived by you into believing you were a victim of harassment coming to the conclusion that you might be in physical danger.
“It was all a sham.
He sentenced her to 16 months in prison for 29 counts of fraud to be served concurrently.
He gave her a consecutive six months in prison for lying about a pharmaceutical qualification to get a job and eight months in prison for perverting the course of justice to be served concurrently.
When she was sentenced to prison, she collapsed on the floor of the dock and prison guards had to call for assistance to help her down to the cells.
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