A Va­len­cia man was grant­ed $500,000 bail with sure­ty and was or­dered to ap­pear be­fore a mag­is­trate to an­swer to two counts of ut­ter­ing a forged valu­able se­cu­ri­ty and at­tempt­ing to ob­tain mon­ey by false pre­tence.

The TTPS says Spar­ta­cus Coutain, 36, New City Av­enue, Va­len­cia ap­peared be­fore Jus­tice of the Peace Stephen Young and will ap­pear be­fore the Mag­is­trate on Fri­day 29th De­cem­ber, 2023. Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion re­port­ed that on Fri­day 24th No­vem­ber 2023, a man ten­dered a Cen­tral Bank cheque drawn on the ac­count of the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment in the sum of $900,000.00 for en­cash­ment.

The cheque was ac­cept­ed as gen­uine, how­ev­er, up­on ver­i­fi­ca­tion it was dis­cov­ered to be a fraud­u­lent item.

The fraud squad was con­tact­ed and the man ar­rest­ed.

Fur­ther en­quiries re­vealed that on 23rd May 2023, the said man de­posit­ed a Cen­tral Bank cheque drawn on the ac­count of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port in the sum of $500,000.00 in­to his ac­count.

How­ev­er, the cheque was dis­cov­ered to be fraud­u­lent.

No mon­ey was paid in both in­stances.

He was charged by Cpl Williams of the Fraud Squad for the of­fences on Wednes­day 29th No­vem­ber 2023.

The in­ves­tiga­tive team was led by In­spec­tor Tri­cia Smith and spear­head­ed by Snr Supt Ar­let Groome.