A fake Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) agent was jailed for two years yes­ter­day for tak­ing $7,000 from a man to get him an HDC house.Corinne Hunte, 39, a moth­er of three, mum­bled "what will hap­pen to my chil­dren?" as she was car­ried off to be­gin serv­ing her sen­tence.Be­fore pass­ing sen­tence, San Fer­nan­do mag­is­trate Sui­mon­gal Ram­saran said such acts of dis­hon­esty were un­ac­cept­able and he want­ed to dis­cour­age peo­ple from be­hav­ing that way."A cus­to­di­al sen­tence is nec­es­sary n or­der to pre­vent per­sons from be­hav­ing in this man­ner," he added.

Hunte de­fraud­ed Dex­ter Joseph of $7,000 by pre­tend­ing she was an agent of the HDC. She plead­ed guilty.Court pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Rus­sell Ra­moutar, in read­ing the facts, said on Ju­ly 26, 2012, Joseph met Hunte at the Ste Madeleine Sec­ondary School and said she could help him get a gov­ern­ment house.She took $7,000 from him. Joseph did not get the house.Last May 18 Joseph made a re­port to the Ste Madeleine Po­lice Sta­tion. Asked by the mag­is­trate what she did with the mon­ey, Hunte said she gave it to some­one at HDC.

Hunte said she, her com­mon-law hus­band and an­oth­er woman al­so gave the per­son mon­ey to get a gov­ern­ment house for them. Asked by the mag­is­trate if she got a house, Hunte said no.

Say­ing there was a hous­ing short­age, the mag­is­trate said every­body be­lieved they could ac­quire a house through a con­tact."Trinidad is a con­tact so­ci­ety," he added. For years, he said, peo­ple looked for a con­tact in the Li­cens­ing Of­fice to get their dri­vers' per­mits and the same thing was now hap­pen­ing at HDC.

Ram­saran said the of­fence car­ried a max­i­mum penal­ty of five years. How­ev­er, be­cause Hunte had no pre­vi­ous con­vic­tions or pend­ing mat­ters, he said, a start­ing point would be three years.The mag­is­trate re­duced the sen­tence to two years af­ter giv­ing her a one-third dis­count for plead­ing guilty.