An­tho­ny Ram­lal ap­peared be­fore Cou­va Mag­is­trate Chris­tine Charles yes­ter­day charged with is­su­ing fraud­u­lent cheques. He was grant­ed $35,000 bail with a sure­ty and the mat­ter was ad­journed to April 13th, 2021.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice re­ports, on Sep­tem­ber 13th, the own­er of Im­port and Ex­port Ser­vices lo­cat­ed at Trinci­ty, re­port­ed that dur­ing the pe­ri­od Au­gust 28th 2018 and Sep­tem­ber 12th 2018 she re­ceived an or­der over the tele­phone for Christ­mas trees val­ued at $165,930.00.

The vic­tim al­leged­ly re­ceived the or­der from a com­pa­ny and two per­sons and pay­ment was said to have been made on two sep­a­rate oc­ca­sions via cheque from two sep­a­rate fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

Af­ter the cheques were de­posit­ed by the vic­tim, her bankers re­vealed that the cheques were fraud­u­lent. It was al­so de­ter­mined that the name of the per­sons and com­pa­ny were fic­ti­tious. W/Cpl (Ag) De­onar­ine was de­tailed to in­ves­ti­gate the re­port and con­duct­ed en­quires.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od Ju­ly 15th - 17th Ju­ly, 2020, ex­er­cis­es were con­duct­ed in the South­ern and Cen­tral Di­vi­sions, led by Snr Supt Groome and co­or­di­nat­ed by Sgt Ba­choo and Sgt Lutch­man.
As a re­sult, it was dis­cov­ered that An­tho­ny Ram­lal, 66, of Bonne Ven­ture, Gas­par­il­lo, was the al­leged per­son be­hind the fake com­pa­ny and names.

He al­leged­ly sold a quan­ti­ty of the items to a fur­nish­ing com­pa­ny in Bal­main, Cou­va, and a quan­ti­ty was stored at a ware­house in Gas­par­il­lo.

An­tho­ny Ram­lal was ar­rest­ed for sev­er­al mat­ters en­gag­ing the Fraud Squad as it re­lates to re­ceiv­ing stolen prop­er­ty by the is­suance of fraud­u­lent cheques. Sev­er­al items which were al­leged­ly pur­chased via the use of fraud­u­lent cheques were re­cov­ered. W/Cpl (Ag) De­onar­ine laid the charge against An­tho­ny Ram­lal for two counts of re­ceiv­ing stolen items amount­ing to $7,920.00.