Police applicant charged over alleged forged CXC certificate

A woman has been grant­ed bail af­ter ap­pear­ing in the High Court charged with pre­sent­ing a forged Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil (CXC) cer­tifi­cate in an at­tempt to join the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Avey­ola Castil­lo-Clair­mont was charged with Ut­ter­ing a Forged Doc­u­ment when she ap­peared be­fore Mas­ter Adia Mo­hammed to­day. She re­ceived bail in the sum of $80,000 with sure­ty. The mat­ter has been ad­journed to 18 De­cem­ber 2025 for a sta­tus hear­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, a woman ap­plied to join the TTPS in 2019 and pro­vid­ed a pre­lim­i­nary re­sult slip show­ing pass­ing grades. She was asked to re­turn with her of­fi­cial CXC cer­tifi­cate. In­ves­ti­ga­tors say she re­turned to the Po­lice Acad­e­my on 31 Oc­to­ber 2025 with a cer­tifi­cate in her name show­ing the same grades list­ed on the ear­li­er slip.

The doc­u­ment was ini­tial­ly ac­cept­ed. How­ev­er, ver­i­fi­ca­tion lat­er re­vealed it to be a forged cer­tifi­cate. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­port­ed­ly con­firmed that she did not re­ceive the grades stat­ed.

The mat­ter was re­port­ed to the Fraud Squad and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion launched. On 25 No­vem­ber 2025, an op­er­a­tion led by DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Natasha George, ACP White Col­lar Crime Di­vi­sion Avinash Singh, and co­or­di­nat­ed by se­nior of­fi­cers in­clud­ing Snr Supt Michael Jack­man, re­sult­ed in the ar­rest of a fe­male sus­pect at the Po­lice Acad­e­my.

Castil­lo-Clair­mont was for­mal­ly charged on 27 No­vem­ber 2025 by W/Cpl Jade Glas­gow.

The TTPS is re­mind­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic that us­ing fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments to de­ceive oth­ers is a se­ri­ous of­fence, with even harsh­er penal­ties when such doc­u­ments are used to gain en­try in­to pub­lic ser­vice.