Dear Editor,
In serving summons to appear in Guyana’s courts on U.S. citizen, Rickford Burke, in New York State, the Guyana Police Force (GPF) has taken a welcome step to combat the rising scourge of alleged extortion of Guyanese by individuals residing in the US. In September 2022, the GPF issued a wanted bulletin for Burke concerning the offense of Conspiracy to Commit a Felony, Contrary to Section 33 of the Criminal Law (Offences) Act, Chapter 8:01 with regards to the publication of defamatory libel allegedly to extort money from Afras Mohammed; Burke, no doubt, feeling secure in the U.S, mocked the law enforcement efforts of the GPF, however, now that the first step towards his extradition to face justice in Guyana has been taken, Burke will be laughing on the other side of his face now and more importantly, those who have been using social media platforms to openly run extortion schemes, will understand that there are is no escaping the long arm of the law, and, although the wheels of Justice grind slowly, they grind exceedingly fine.
Guyana’s biggest struggle in these extradition matters will not be with exposed arguments by the defendants of ‘political persecution’ but with the American Internal Revenue Service (IRS). It seems the social media predators (and some political operatives) have made wide use of cash transfer platforms such as Cash App, Venmo, Zelle, Pay Pal, Money Gram, Western Union, Bank-to-Bank transfers et al. without due reportage of income as required by law. While funds for personal use require little or no reporting, those received for goods and services (including social media ads) do; 600 USD per annum is the threshold. I do hope the bell-ringing politician takes note and does not fall afoul of the IRS. The extortionists are going to have a rather difficult time explaining the sums they receive; I am well aware of one case where a mother paid 15,000 USD to expose an affair being carried on by her son and, then a further 15,000 USD to ‘delete everything’ by the woman involved in the affair; the sum mentioned in the Burke-Mohammed case is more than 100,000 USD.
The IRS is going to go after their ‘pound of flesh’ and, our revenue agencies should take notes. Guy-ana’s Financial Intelli-gence Unit (FIU) is responsible for requesting, receiving, analyzing, and disseminating information related to suspicious transactions and other information relating to money laundering, terrorist financing, or proceeds of crime. Informa-tion on any suspicious transactions is passed to the Special Organized Crime Unit (SOCU) of the GPF for investigation. The Cyber-crime Unit is also a repository of information on extortion schemes as those who refuse to pay usually make reports of Cyberbullying and/or attempts to extort cash. We have the system to combat overseas-based extortion but it needs to work harder to protect our citizens. The Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) may also want to pounce early before the IRS beats them to the punch. It feels as if Christmas has come early and, in that spirit of giving, I have prepared a dossier to assist with names and evidence for our local authorities but also intend to share it with the US Embassy, Georgetown.
Sincerely,
Robin Singh
