The press watchdog has thrown out a fraudster’s complaint about a weekly newspaper and its sister website’s reporting of her conviction.

The Aldershot News & Mail and Get Surrey reported on the trial of Stacy Banner, left, and her conviction for five counts of fraud.

The victim of the fraud was the terminally-ill partner of John Lowe, who later went on to be convicted of the murder of Banner’s mother and sister and is now serving a life sentence.

Lowe was also said to have been an accomplice in the fraud, but full details of Banner’s conviction were only revealed after the Crown decided that it was not in the public interest to prosecute him.

In a complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation under Clause 1 (Accuracy), Clause 2 (Privacy), Clause 3 (Harassment) and Clause 4 (Intrusion into grief or shock) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, Banner claimed a number of references to Lowe’s previous conviction and the circumstances surrounding her mother and sister’s deaths had been handled insensitively, while it was disrespectful to publish images of her mother and sister alongside images of their killer.

She also claimed the articles had inaccurately reported that she had been convicted of charges of fraud totalling £107,950 and that the victim in the fraud had dementia.

In their response, the Trinity Mirror titles said the circumstances surrounding the death of the complainant’s mother and sister had been genuinely relevant to the report given the connection between Banner, Lowe and his victims.

Shorthand notes taken by the reporter during the complainant’s trial were also provided to IPSO, which recorded that she had been found guilty of five counts of fraud, totalling £107,950.

The notes further recorded that the court had heard that the victim in the fraud had been “formally diagnosed as suffering from dementia”.

The complaint was not upheld, and the full adjudications can be read here and here.