Three Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) staffers and a police special constable yesterday appeared in court on charges of computer-related forgery and were placed on $100,000 bail each after pleading not guilty.
A release from the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) said that GRA staffers Reguel Jack of Lot 1695 Unity Place, South Ruimveldt, Georgetown; Akeem Martin, of Lot 19 Old Road Den Amstel; and Ruth Williams of lot 27 A, Sera Lodge Stewartville, West Coast Demerara along with Police Special Constable Winston Small of Lot 43 Avocado Place, East Ruimveldt, Georgetown were all charged yesterday by SOCU with computer related forgery.
The release said that Martin and Williams were charged jointly and Jack and Small were charged separately. They all appeared at Georgetown Magistrate’s Court 2 before her Magistrate Leron Daly where the charges were read and they all pleaded not guilty and were granted bail. The matters were adjourned to 29th August and transferred to Court Eleven for trial. With the exception of Small who was unrepresented by an attorney-at-law, all the other defendants had legal representation.
Based on a report from the GRA, the release said that SOCU conducted an investigation which showed that during the month of October 2021, Special Constable 14755 Small told Shaquan Caesar, a minibus conductor, who was working with Antoney Salaman Jacobs (a bus driver), that he could get a driver’s licence for him at a cost of $83,000 from the GRA. Small told Caesar that he could use Jacobs’s driver’s licence and he would have someone change the photograph.
The release said that Caesar managed to get a photograph of Jacobs’s licence and on 1st November 2021, they both went to a clerk at Maraj building and told her that Caesar was Jacobs and that he had lost his driver’s licence and identification card and was requesting an affidavit to take to GRA to process his driver’s licence. The clerk drafted the affidavit in favour of Jacobs upon Caesar’s instruction and took it to a Justice of Peace who did not question the transaction and signed it.
On 1st November 2021, the release said that Small took Caesar to the GRA with the affidavit where Jack, a GRA lodgment clerk took Caesar’s photograph via the Licence Revenue Processing System (LRPS) and processed a driver’s licence for him in the name of Antoney Salaman Jacobs with Jacobs’s driver’s licence details. The driver’s licence was then issued to Caesar but he lost it two weeks after.
On 16th December 2021, Small and Caesar again obtained another affidavit and went to GRA. Martin, another lodgment clerk at GRA, then took Caesar’s photograph via the LRPS and placed it onto Jacobs’s licence. He did the transaction without any form of identification, the release said.
The licence was keyed by Ruth Williams, the query clerk who certified that the transaction was authentic despite irregularities with the identification details and affidavit.
Caesar was then issued with another driver’s licence and on 25th January 2022, he was arrested for a breach of a traffic offence. He was questioned by the traffic rank who arrested him about his driver’s licence as the traffic rank knew Jacobs. Caesar admitted that he paid money to acquire the bogus licence. He was subsequently charged with forgery and uttering forged documents. He pleaded guilty and paid a fine.
