Two men from Ma­yaro have been charged with lar­ce­ny by trick in which a San Fer­nan­do den­tist was de­fraud­ed of $190,000 in a bo­gus cur­ren­cy ex­change scheme.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, on Sep­tem­ber 13th, the vic­tim, a 35-year-old res­i­dent of Palmiste, was con­tact­ed by a man claim­ing to be an em­ploy­ee of a well-known phar­ma­cy.

The caller re­quest­ed an ex­change of Trinidad and To­ba­go cur­ren­cy for Unit­ed States cur­ren­cy un­der the pre­text of as­sist­ing with an ur­gent med­ical pro­ce­dure.

The vic­tim sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred TT $140,000 to a bank ac­count and TT $50,000 to an­oth­er bank ac­count. How­ev­er, af­ter com­plet­ing the trans­ac­tions, the vic­tim nev­er re­ceived the promised USD and was un­able to re-es­tab­lish con­tact with the caller.

Fol­low­ing an in­ten­sive in­ves­ti­ga­tion led by Sgt Bac­chus, charges were laid on May 8th against two labour­ers ages 24 and 29 of Ma­yaro. Both men were charged with Lar­ce­ny by Trick and are sched­uled to ap­pear be­fore a Princes Town Mas­ters Court South to­day.