Woman charged over $70k vehicle importation scam

A St He­le­na woman has been charged with lar­ce­ny af­ter al­leged­ly ob­tain­ing $70,000 from a per­son who paid for the pur­chase and im­por­ta­tion of a 14-seater Nis­san N350 bus.

Camille Prescod, of Car­men Street, St He­le­na, ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter In­di­ra Chinebas at the Port of Spain Mas­ters’ Court on Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 17.

She was grant­ed bail in the sum of $50,000 with sure­ty.

The charge fol­lowed an in­tel­li­gence-led in­ves­ti­ga­tion by of­fi­cers at­tached to the Crim­i­nal In­ves­ti­ga­tion De­part­ment (CID) In­ves­tiga­tive Unit.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, the com­plainant re­port­ed pay­ing Prescod a to­tal of $70,000 in cash be­tween Ju­ly 12 and Au­gust 16, 2022, in Port of Spain.

The mon­ey was al­leged­ly paid for the pur­chase, reg­is­tra­tion and de­liv­ery of the 14-seater Nis­san N350 bus from the Port of Port of Spain with­in three months.

How­ev­er, the ve­hi­cle was nev­er de­liv­ered.

Po­lice said the vic­tim made ef­forts to ob­tain a re­fund, but those at­tempts were un­suc­cess­ful.

Fur­ther checks were sub­se­quent­ly made with the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion on Jan­u­ary 14, 2025.

Those checks al­leged­ly re­vealed that there was no record of the ve­hi­cle be­ing im­port­ed.

Prescod was de­tained on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 14, 2026, and sub­se­quent­ly charged by com­plainant W/Ag Cpl Quashie fol­low­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

The mat­ter has since been trans­ferred to the Port of Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court and was ad­journed to Oc­to­ber 16.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice Fraud Squad is us­ing the case to re­mind mem­bers of the pub­lic to con­duct thor­ough checks be­fore mak­ing pay­ments for goods and ser­vices, par­tic­u­lar­ly ve­hi­cles and im­port­ed items.

The Fraud Squad ad­vised prospec­tive buy­ers to ver­i­fy that in­di­vid­u­als or com­pa­nies have the nec­es­sary ca­pac­i­ty, au­thor­i­ty and li­cences to pro­vide the goods be­ing ad­ver­tised.

The pub­lic was al­so urged to con­firm im­port records with rel­e­vant gov­ern­ment agen­cies, in­clud­ing the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion or Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty, be­fore trans­fer­ring funds.

Po­lice fur­ther ad­vised con­sumers to in­sist that trans­ac­tions are sup­port­ed by legal­ly bind­ing con­tracts and for­mal re­ceipts.

The Fraud Squad specif­i­cal­ly cau­tioned against mak­ing large cash pay­ments with­out ver­i­fi­able es­crow arrange­ments.

The TTPS urged mem­bers of the pub­lic to ex­er­cise due dili­gence when deal­ing with ve­hi­cle im­porters and oth­er busi­ness­es of­fer­ing high-val­ue goods.