Suspects charged in burglaries, land scam
Two burglaries and what appears to be a case of con artistry have relieved victims in Belize City, San Pedro and Seine Bight of thousands of dollars in cash and property, and also landed a number of people in police custody. We’ll start in the old capital, where businessman Richard Price reported to police on Saturday, that his parents’ Gabourel Lane home had been burglarized. Stolen from the house were two laptop computers, a licensed firearm and an undisclosed amount of cash. Quick work by the police has led to the recovery of the two computers and the arrest of four people believed to be responsible. Twenty-one year old Edwin Vanegas, twenty-one year old Allan Orellano and seventeen-year-old Manuel Williams have been charged for the crimes of burglary and conspiracy to commit burglary. The person who first reported the heist, twenty-eight year old caretaker for the house, Blanca Contreras, has been arrested and charged for the crimes of conspiracy to commit burglary and committing a mischievous act, that act being the false report to police.
The other burglary was reported to have occurred in San Pedro sometime between Sunday afternoon and Tuesday morning. Businessman Tony Buono told police that someone broke into his apartment and stole an assortment of items valued at just under ten thousand dollars. Police investigations led to the arrest of twenty three year old Sergio Uribio of the San Pedrito area of San Pedro and the recovery of a number of the stolen items. Uribio appeared in Magistrate’s court today where he pleaded guilty to the charges and was fined two thousand five hundred dollars, in default, fifteen months in jail. San Pedro police are hopeful that they will be able to recover the remainder of the stolen items and remind the public that it is against the law to buy hot goods.
In the case of the scam artist who struck in the south, an American woman is tonight short of close to forty thousand dollars and a member of the Seine Bight village council stands accused of fraud. According to Stann Creek police, in April of this year, U.S. national Christine Lotz entered into an agreement with the vice chairman of Seine Bight, Floyd “Jerry” Palacio for the purchase of a piece of property in the village. Land documents faxed to Lotz in the States, apparently convinced the prospective property owner of the legitimacy of the deal and over a period of a couple of months, wired a total of nineteen thousand, six hundred U.S. dollars to Palacio via the bank of Nova Scotia. When Lotz came to Belize earlier this month, she stopped in at the Lands Department in Belmopan to check up on the transfer of ownership, only to be notified that no such transaction had been recorded. That is when she went to Dangriga police who promptly picked up Palacio and this afternoon marched him into Magistrate’s Court where the local politician was made to answer to a charge of obtaining property by deception. Palacio was offered bail of fifteen thousand dollars, which up to late this evening he was unable to post, and remained in the Police lock up. He is scheduled to reappear in court on October twenty-sixth.
