Couple Sentenced for Defrauding Guyanese Through Fraudulent Investment Scheme
A man originally from Cuba and his Guyanese partner have received prison terms and monetary penalties after a magistrate convicted them of running a Ponzi operation that cheated numerous locals out of their savings.
Couple Sentenced for Defrauding Guyanese Through Fraudulent Investment Scheme
A husband and wife duo have been handed jail sentences and hefty fines after a magistrate ruled they ran an unlawful investment racket that stripped hundreds of people across Guyana of their money. Authorities at the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) confirmed the verdict delivered at the Vigilance Magistrates' Court.
The accused were identified as Yuri Garcia Dominguez, who hails from Cuba, and Ateeka Ishmael, born in Guyana. Presiding officer Sunil Scarce ordered each to pay a penalty of one million local dollars and serve twelve months behind bars for the Ponzi-related conviction.
On a separate count of managing an enterprise without proper approval from the securities regulator, Dominguez was ordered to pay an extra hundred thousand dollars and spend a year and a half incarcerated. Ishmael was given the same fine, with half a year as the alternative custodial term.
Prosecutors told the bench that from mid-May through mid-October in 2020, the defendants carried out their fraudulent activities in Coldingen, situated along the East Coast of Demerara. Over that period, they persuaded scores of residents to hand over sizeable amounts of cash, promising returns that never materialised.
The law-enforcement division began looking into the matter after a flood of complaints from ordinary people who said they had entrusted their funds to the scheme only to lose everything. SOCU hailed the outcome as a significant milestone in clamping down on unlicensed financial dealings and protecting the public from predatory scams.
Second-in-command Fazil Karimbaksh reaffirmed the agency's dedication to probing white-collar wrongdoing, including market abuse, laundering of illicit gains, and recovery of criminally obtained assets. He pledged that similar prosecutions would continue to be pursued vigorously within the framework of the country's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regime.
Source: The St Kitts Nevis Observer
Source: Google News GY — Crime