Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

An es­ti­mat­ed $167.37 mil­lion was lost to fraud­sters up to Ju­ly this year, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cers of the Fraud Squad.

The fig­ure rep­re­sents a 227.2 per cent in­crease in the amount of mon­ey lost to fraud com­pared with the same pe­ri­od in 2025, when $51.15 mil­lion was re­port­ed­ly de­fraud­ed.

Po­lice said the trend was ob­served even as there was a sig­nif­i­cant drop in the num­ber of fraud re­ports made. They sug­gest­ed this could be be­cause in­di­vid­ual fraud cas­es are tar­get­ing larg­er sums of mon­ey through in­creas­ing­ly in­no­v­a­tive meth­ods of swin­dling cash and goods from vic­tims.

Pre­sent­ing the fig­ures at yes­ter­day’s week­ly TTPS Me­dia Brief­ing, Supt Arnold Lutch­man said that as of Ju­ly, the Fraud Squad had re­ceived 551 re­ports, com­pared with 819 dur­ing the same pe­ri­od last year.

He at­trib­uted the in­crease in the fi­nan­cial im­pact of fraud of­fences to the use of fraud­u­lent cheques to de­ceive in­sti­tu­tions and busi­ness­es.

In­sp Mar­vin Fran­cis said such schemes in­volved fraud­u­lent, coun­ter­feit, forged or stolen cheques be­ing used to ob­tain cash or goods.

He said the doc­u­ments were de­signed to re­sem­ble le­git­i­mate cheques, in­clud­ing those is­sued by gov­ern­ment agen­cies and min­istries, and warned that there were sev­er­al signs peo­ple should look out for.

“One, we have the or­der be­hav­iour where a large or­der is made (to a busi­ness) via tele­phone or What­sApp mes­sag­ing.

“They are usu­al­ly ex­pen­sive items and the cus­tomer in­sists on im­me­di­ate pos­ses­sion of the goods even be­fore the cheque is cleared.

“An­oth­er be­hav­iour to look at is the cheque or the ID it­self. The ac­tu­al cheque ap­pears to be al­tered, dam­aged or in­con­sis­tent in terms of the fig­ures and words writ­ten on the cheque.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the pur­chas­er may be re­luc­tant to pro­vide valid in­for­ma­tion and even if they pro­vide iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, it’s sent via What­sApp and that in it­self may be fraud­u­lent.”

Fran­cis warned that, as an ad­di­tion­al tac­tic to il­lic­it­ly ob­tain goods im­me­di­ate­ly, fraud­sters may ap­pear im­pa­tient and rush the trans­ac­tion to re­ceive the goods be­fore pay­ment can be ver­i­fied.

“We have seen in times past in­stances where a pur­chase is done on a Fri­day af­ter­noon, where the goods have to be col­lect­ed that same af­ter­noon, but the cheque won’t be ver­i­fied un­til Mon­day morn­ing. By the time that’s done, it’s dis­cov­ered that it was a fraud­u­lent cheque and there’s no trace as to where the goods have gone, be­cause a false ad­dress was giv­en in or­der­ing the goods as well.

“So nev­er re­lease goods un­til the cheque is ful­ly cleared and funds are con­firmed by your fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.”

He said small de­tails, in­clud­ing spelling er­rors, era­sure marks, changes in the font of words and dig­its, or miss­ing se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures, could in­di­cate that a cheque was bo­gus.

Asked whether the Fraud Squad had suc­cess­ful­ly un­cov­ered any large-scale op­er­a­tions in­volved in forg­ing cheques, Fran­cis said of­fi­cers had not been able to seize equip­ment or ar­rest any­one con­nect­ed to an elab­o­rate net­work but con­tin­ued to in­ves­ti­gate such cas­es.

“That’s one thing about forgery: the cheques are cre­at­ed to ap­pear to be re­al. How­ev­er, we are still work­ing to dis­cov­er who are the peo­ple cre­at­ing these fraud­u­lent cheques.

“We re­ly on in­for­ma­tion from the pub­lic and we work in tan­dem with oth­er agen­cies in the TTPS and even out­side the TTPS to lo­cate the peo­ple cre­at­ing these cheques, so it’s still on­go­ing in terms of in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

Lutch­man re­port­ed that as of Ju­ly, 141 charges had been laid against peo­ple ac­cused of fraud. He said this rep­re­sent­ed a 12.8 per cent in­crease com­pared with the same pe­ri­od last year.

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia’s ques­tions, Lutch­man said an es­ti­mat­ed 25 per cent of peo­ple ar­rest­ed and charged with fraud of­fences were re­peat of­fend­ers.

He said se­r­i­al fraud­sters were par­tic­u­lar­ly vis­i­ble in cas­es of “trav­el/va­ca­tion fraud”, in which peo­ple pur­port­ing to be le­git­i­mate trav­el agents so­lic­it mon­ey with the promise of book­ing ac­com­mo­da­tion for vis­i­tors but fail to ho­n­our the trans­ac­tion.

“We have had peo­ple where we charged the own­ers of trav­el agen­cies and not too long af­ter the charges, we got ad­di­tion­al re­ports. So on the low­er end, I would say 25 per cent are re­peat of­fend­ers.”

Asked whether he felt the Fraud Squad would lob­by for or sup­port stiffer leg­is­la­tion for re­peat fraud­sters, Lutch­man said while this was a mat­ter for leg­is­la­tors and the Ju­di­cia­ry, he felt it was “worth con­sid­er­ing.”

The unit’s head, Snr Supt Michael Jack­man, re­port­ed that be­tween Jan­u­ary and Ju­ly this year, there were nine re­ports of fraud in­volv­ing gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions, ac­count­ing for $91.66 mil­lion.

Of that fig­ure, he said $29.77 mil­lion was suc­cess­ful­ly en­cashed, mean­ing it was con­vert­ed in­to phys­i­cal cash by fraud­sters, while the re­main­ing funds were un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­vert­ed by the sus­pects.

Jan­u­ary to Ju­ly 2026 com­pared with the same pe­ri­od last year

Gen­er­al fraud de­clined by 41.6 per cent — cash val­ue: $74.91 mil­lion

Gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tion­al fraud de­clined by 2.9 per cent — cash val­ue: $78.86 mil­lion

ATM fraud de­clined by 20.6 per cent — cash val­ue: $1.4 mil­lion

In­for­ma­tion re­ports re­quir­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion de­clined by 22.7 per cent — cash val­ue: $11.53 mil­lion

Out­sta­tion re­ports de­clined by 30 per cent — cash val­ue: $0.67 mil­lion