A man charged for forg­ing doc­u­ments re­lat­ed to the HDC has been de­nied bail.

44-year-old Corey Suther­land was de­nied bail when he ap­peared in court on May 6.

Two con­trac­tors re­port­ed to po­lice that on April 30th, 2024, they were con­tact­ed by a man who claimed to be an em­ploy­ee of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC). The man al­leged­ly in­vit­ed the con­trac­tors to bid for an HDC con­tract to con­struct homes in the Cou­va dis­trict.

Fol­low­ing site vis­its, the con­trac­tors were al­leged­ly in­formed that they were award­ed the con­tract and each giv­en a Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go cheque drawn on the ac­count of the Min­istry of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment in the sum of TT$828,104.64. The mon­ey rep­re­sent­ed a mo­bi­liza­tion fee pay­ment which was ac­cept­ed as gen­uine and lat­er found to be fraud­u­lent.

The Fraud Squad is ad­vis­ing busi­ness own­ers, to be vig­i­lant for fraud­u­lent Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go cheques. In­ves­ti­ga­tors say fraud­sters are claim­ing to be em­ployed with Gov­ern­ment Min­istries and in a po­si­tion to ac­quire Gov­ern­ment con­tracts for busi­ness own­ers, usu­al­ly con­trac­tors with reg­is­tered busi­ness­es. The con­trac­tors are then asked to pay kick­backs to the em­ploy­ee in ex­change for the con­tract. They are then giv­en these fraud­u­lent cheques to take to the bank for en­cash­ment