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Thursday, July 3, 2025

Ex-bank worker to pay $800,000 to customer for fraud

by

735 days ago
20230628

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer RBC Roy­al Bank (T&T) Lim­it­ed em­ploy­ee has been or­dered to pay al­most $800,000 in com­pen­sa­tion to a cus­tomer, who claimed that she (the for­mer em­ploy­ee) used her po­si­tion to de­fraud her.

High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad on Wednes­day or­dered Lean­na Pereira to pay the com­pen­sa­tion to La Ro­main res­i­dent Dilks Pierre as he up­held Pierre’s fraud and fraud­u­lent mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion case against her.

Pierre was ini­tial­ly seek­ing to hold the bank vic­ar­i­ous­ly li­able and neg­li­gent over Pereira’s al­leged con­duct, but chose to with­draw that as­pect of her law­suit as it was set to go on tri­al be­fore Jus­tice Seep­er­sad, yes­ter­day.

She was or­dered to pay $90,000 in le­gal costs to the bank for the dis­con­tin­ued case.

As Pereira did not file any ev­i­dence in the case and was not rep­re­sent­ed by an at­tor­ney, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad grant­ed a de­fault judg­ment against her, af­ter ver­i­fy­ing the va­lid­i­ty of Pierre’s claims.

Ac­cord­ing to her court fil­ings, in Sep­tem­ber 2018, Pierre claimed that she met an in­mate at the East­ern Cor­rec­tion­al and Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre, in San­ta Rosa, while vis­it­ing the lo­ca­tion with a mem­ber of her church.

She claimed that she be­gan a friend­ship with the in­mate, who re­quest­ed her as­sis­tance in con­tact­ing a pur­port­ed at­tor­ney based in the Unit­ed States to fa­cil­i­tate the trans­fer of the pro­ceeds of the sale of a par­cel of land.

Pierre claimed that she as­sist­ed the in­mate and formed a friend­ship with the pur­port­ed at­tor­ney, who of­fered his as­sis­tance to her with fi­nan­cial in­vest­ments.

She claimed that the pur­port­ed at­tor­ney in­tro­duced her to Pereira.

She claimed that in ear­ly 2019, she be­gan mak­ing pay­ments to Pereira for in­vest­ment.

She con­tend­ed that she re­alised that she had been de­fraud­ed af­ter Pereira al­leged­ly gave her sus­pi­cious state­ments us­ing the bank’s let­ter­head.

She re­port­ed what tran­spired to the bank and the po­lice.

In de­ter­min­ing the case, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad ex­pressed a sense of dis­qui­et over the sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in fraud cas­es be­fore the courts.

“It ap­pears that this Re­pub­lic is fast be­com­ing the land of fraud, fake news, and fete,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

He en­cour­aged cit­i­zens to ex­er­cise ex­treme vig­i­lance to pro­tect them­selves and their as­sets.

“Take noth­ing for grant­ed and ver­i­fy all in­for­ma­tion be­fore any in­vest­ment or re­al es­tate trans­ac­tion is pur­sued,” he said.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad al­so ques­tioned the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) in­ac­tion in re­la­tion to Pierre’s re­port.

“This de­fen­dant (Pereira) had a work his­to­ry with a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion. She is not a mys­te­ri­ous in­di­vid­ual. Her iden­ti­ty is known,” he said.

“There seems to be an abysmal fail­ure by the TTPS to dis­charge its man­date to pro­tect and serve and sad­ly there ap­pears to be a dis­turb­ing sit­u­a­tion of se­lec­tive en­force­ment,” he added.

As part of his de­ci­sion, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad di­rect­ed that a tran­script of the pro­ceed­ings be sent to the Of­fice of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice.

Pierre was rep­re­sent­ed by Cedric Nep­tune, Auldric Nep­tune, and Col­in Cleghorn.

The bank was rep­re­sent­ed by Ke­ston Mc­Quilkin and An­drea Orie.


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