A 40-year-old busi­ness­woman was grant­ed $500,000 bail with a sure­ty last Tues­day by a Jus­tice of the Peace on nine charges in con­nec­tion with ve­hi­cle fraud re­ports to­talling $525,700.

The TTPS said Terkessa Br­ere­ton-Dun­can of Cipero Road, San Fer­nan­do, was charged on Oc­to­ber 24 with five counts of Mon­ey Laun­der­ing to­talling $154,700, Lar­ce­ny in the amount of $153,000, Fraud­u­lent Con­ver­sion in the amounts of $57,000, and $161,000 re­spec­tive­ly, and Ut­ter­ing a Forged Valu­able Se­cu­ri­ty.

Br­ere­ton-Dun­can is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore the San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trates’ Court on De­cem­ber 14, 2023, to an­swer the charges.

She was ar­rest­ed and joint­ly charged by Cpl Lewis and PCs Williams and Ali, of the Fraud Squad South Of­fice, who launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to po­lice re­ports in which sev­er­al peo­ple re­port­ed hav­ing hand­ed over down pay­ments to a woman be­lieved to be of a Roll on Roll Off com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the down pay­ments were to be used for the im­por­ta­tion, reg­is­tra­tion and de­liv­ery of var­i­ous types of ve­hi­cles.

De­tec­tives were in­formed, how­ev­er, that the woman was nev­er in a po­si­tion to ex­e­cute the trans­ac­tions and all ef­forts by the prospec­tive buy­ers to re­trieve the funds proved fu­tile.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was sup­port­ed by per­son­nel at­tached to the Re­search An­a­lyt­i­cal Unit.