Shaun Mor­ris: Pub­lic De­fend­er I

Pub­lic De­fend­ers’ De­part­ment

In Part 1, we con­sid­ered of­fences un­der the Forgery Act. How­ev­er, there are oth­er of­fences in­volv­ing dis­hon­esty which are cov­ered un­der the Lar­ce­ny Act, Chap 11:12 (The Act).

What is fraud un­der the Lar­ce­ny Act

The law doesn’t give a sep­a­rate de­f­i­n­i­tion for “fraud” un­der the Lar­ce­ny Act, but if some­one ob­tains prop­er­ty through fraud, it amounts to steal­ing. At the core, fraud means trick­ing some­one on pur­pose to get their mon­ey, prop­er­ty, or oth­er valu­ables. This ar­ti­cle will fo­cus on oth­er ex­am­ples of fraud­u­lent of­fences and the pre­scribed penal­ties.

Of­fences car­ry­ing a max­i­mum of 15 years im­pris­on­ment

Sec­tion 31 deals with what we com­mon­ly re­fer to as ex­tor­tion. This means de­mand­ing mon­ey or valu­ables by threat­en­ing some­one with harm or by threat­en­ing to ac­cuse them of a se­ri­ous crime. It al­so in­cludes us­ing threats to trick some­one in­to sign­ing, chang­ing, or de­stroy­ing im­por­tant doc­u­ments like cheques or con­tracts.

Of­fences car­ry­ing a max­i­mum of 10 years im­pris­on­ment

There are sub­stan­tial penal­ties for per­sons who have know­ing­ly han­dled prop­er­ty that was ob­tained through crime. Sec­tion 35 of the act cre­ates an of­fence if a per­son takes or re­ceives prop­er­ty that is known to be stolen or ob­tained through a se­ri­ous crime. Such per­sons can face up to 10 years in prison.

“Re­ceiv­ing” al­so means if you help to hide, move, or get rid of stolen prop­er­ty in a dis­hon­est way. If you’re charged, you’ll need to ex­plain how you came to have that prop­er­ty. The court will close­ly ex­am­ine the cir­cum­stances.

For ex­am­ple, buy­ing a car for a price that seems too good to be true or at a very low price could be a sign it was stolen.

Of­fences car­ry­ing a max­i­mum of sev­en years im­pris­on­ment

The fol­low­ing of­fences specif­i­cal­ly tar­get per­sons in po­si­tions of trust.

Fraud­u­lent Con­ver­sion: Which oc­curs when a per­son is en­trust­ed with prop­er­ty for a spe­cif­ic pur­pose but lat­er dis­hon­est­ly us­es it for their own or some­one else’s ben­e­fit. For ex­am­ple, a com­pa­ny di­rec­tor tak­ing com­pa­ny prop­er­ty, or some­one abus­ing a pow­er of at­tor­ney, or a per­son sell­ing prop­er­ty that ac­tu­al­ly be­longed to some­one else but was on­ly giv­en to them to hold.

Con­ver­sion by a Trustee: Which ap­plies when some­one is in a po­si­tion of trust be­cause of a will, deed, or le­gal doc­u­ment. If a trustee dis­hon­est­ly takes or us­es prop­er­ty for them­selves, or for any­thing out­side of the trust, it’s a crime. For ex­am­ple, if an ex­ecu­tor of an es­tate sells or us­es prop­er­ty that was meant for the ben­e­fi­cia­ries, that would be this of­fence.

Cor­rupt­ly Tak­ing a Re­ward: Hap­pens when some­one takes mon­ey or a re­ward for help­ing to get back stolen or fraud­u­lent­ly ob­tained prop­er­ty, with­out try­ing to bring the orig­i­nal of­fend­er to jus­tice. It’s of­ten used in cas­es that don’t ful­ly fit un­der the of­fence of cor­rup­tion in the Pre­ven­tion of Cor­rup­tion Act.

Of­fences car­ry­ing a max­i­mum of five years im­pris­on­ment

De­ceiv­ing some­one to gain prop­er­ty is the pri­ma­ry fo­cus of these of­fences. Ob­tain­ing prop­er­ty by false pre­tences is a com­mon fraud charge which car­ries a penal­ty of five years im­pris­on­ment. It hap­pens when some­one lies or tricks an­oth­er per­son to get mon­ey, prop­er­ty, or valu­able doc­u­ments. It al­so in­cludes fool­ing some­one in­to sign­ing or de­stroy­ing im­por­tant pa­pers like con­tracts or cheques.

Of­fences car­ry­ing a max­i­mum of one year im­pris­on­ment

The act al­so ad­dress­es fraud re­lat­ed to debt and cred­it un­der sec­tion 34.

Fraud­u­lent­ly Ob­tain­ing Cred­it: A per­son is guilty of this of­fence if they get cred­it un­der false pre­tences or by any oth­er kind of fraud while in­cur­ring a debt or li­a­bil­i­ty. For ex­am­ple, if a false job let­ter was used in ob­tain­ing a cred­it fa­cil­i­ty from a bank, it may fall un­der this of­fence.

De­fraud­ing Cred­i­tors: It is al­so an of­fence to make a gift or trans­fer your prop­er­ty, or to con­ceal or re­move it, with the in­tent to de­fraud cred­i­tors.

It is im­por­tant to note that all forms of fraud and fi­nan­cial de­cep­tion are treat­ed with se­ri­ous­ness and con­dem­na­tion by the courts. There have been ex­am­ples of sen­tences by our courts that demon­strate this.

A sen­tence of five years was im­posed on an of­fend­er who re­ceived a stolen Hilux mo­tor ve­hi­cle know­ing same to be stolen. The court not­ed that car theft is preva­lent in our so­ci­ety and peo­ple are too will­ing to take the stolen ve­hi­cle for a good price.

Very re­cent­ly, a hefty fine of $75,000 was im­posed on a young man who pur­chased a ve­hi­cle and was caught with the ve­hi­cle bear­ing false plates at the time.

In an­oth­er mat­ter, an of­fend­er was sen­tenced to just over three years’ im­pris­on­ment for re­ceiv­ing the sum of $96,000, rep­re­sent­ing part pay­ment to­wards the pur­chase of land, by false­ly pre­tend­ing he was the own­er.

The law sets up a frame­work specif­i­cal­ly meant to pros­e­cute and pre­vent per­sons from ben­e­fit­ing from dis­hon­esty. There­fore, it is cru­cial to al­ways ver­i­fy in­for­ma­tion when con­duct­ing busi­ness trans­ac­tions and ex­er­cise care, es­pe­cial­ly where the deal seems too good to be true.

Le­gal Aid and Ad­vi­so­ry Au­thor­i­ty,

23 Stan­more Av­enue, Port-of-Spain.

Con­tact: 638-5222

Email: pdd@laaa.gov.tt

Web­site: laaa.org.tt