Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter-In­ves­tiga­tive

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt 

For the sec­ond time this year, a Pe­nal man was jailed for two years af­ter plead­ing guilty to steal­ing down­pay­ments from peo­ple un­der the pre­tence of pro­vid­ing them with cars.

Farand De­o­nanan was sen­tenced by Siparia Mag­is­trate Bri­an Dabideen on No­vem­ber 30.

Dabideen sen­tenced De­o­nanan to two years be­gin­ning Oc­to­ber 10.

In Ju­ly, De­o­nanan was al­so sen­tenced to two years by Dabideen. On both oc­ca­sions, De­o­nanan plead­ed guilty to the of­fences. In Ju­ly, he plead­ed guilty to nine charges of Lar­ce­ny Trick to­talling $266,000, while on No­vem­ber 30, he plead­ed guilty to 27 charges to­talling $1.47 mil­lion and was giv­en the same sen­tence.

The first set of of­fences were strict­ly cash pay­ments while Thurs­day's charges were made up of bank trans­ac­tions and cheques. 

Fraud Squad of­fi­cers be­gan in­ves­ti­gat­ing De­o­nanan af­ter they re­ceived sev­er­al re­ports from peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go that they paid mon­ey to Apol­lo Dis­trib­u­tors Lim­it­ed for ve­hi­cles and did not re­ceive any.

Dur­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, po­lice said De­o­nanan said he was be­ing ex­tort­ed and was forced to swin­dle cus­tomers to sat­is­fy the ex­tor­tion­ists. 

Fol­low­ing his con­vic­tion, po­lice ad­vised po­ten­tial cus­tomers to do due dili­gence and to be care­ful about busi­ness­es op­er­at­ing and ad­ver­tis­ing on so­cial me­dia. 

Fraud Squad of­fi­cers con­sta­bles Williams, Ali, Brew­ster and Sooru­j­paul, were high­ly com­mend­ed by their se­niors for their de­tailed in­ves­ti­ga­tion which led to the 36 charges laid against the 38-year-old.

Po­lice are al­so ad­vis­ing any­one who may have had deal­ings with De­o­nanan or his com­pa­ny, Apol­lo Dis­trib­u­tors Lim­it­ed in the past, to come for­ward.