The Po­lice Ser­vice has is­sued an­oth­er stern warn­ing to the pub­lic to re­main vig­i­lant against fi­nan­cial scams and to ver­i­fy all re­quests for mon­ey trans­fers, es­pe­cial­ly those in­volv­ing cur­ren­cy ex­change or pur­port­ing to be for ur­gent med­ical sit­u­a­tions.

The re­minder comes as two men from Ma­yaro are sched­uled to ap­pear to­day (May 9, 2025) be­fore a Princes Town Mas­ters Court South A, on charges of lar­ce­ny by trick.

Ac­cord­ing to an of­fi­cial TTPS state­ment, the men were for­mal­ly charged in con­nec­tion with a lar­ce­ny by trick case, in which a San Fer­nan­do den­tist was de­fraud­ed of TT$190,000 in a bo­gus cur­ren­cy ex­change scheme.

The TTPS re­ports that the in­ci­dent oc­curred on Fri­day 13 Sep­tem­ber 2024, when 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 re­port­ed­ly re­quest­ed an ex­change of TT-Dol­lars for US-Dol­lars un­der the pre­text of as­sist­ing with an ur­gent med­ical pro­ce­dure.

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

Fol­low­ing a po­lice probe in­to the mat­ter, charges were laid against two labour­ers—ages 24 and 29 years—of Ma­yaro on May 8, 2025.

The men will ap­pear to­day be­fore a Princes Town Court Mas­ter to face charges of lar­ce­ny by trick.