Police Department employee charged with forgery

An accounts clerk from the Belmopan Police Department has been arrested after allegedly stealing over two thousand dollars from the Government. According to police reports, Bernadine Reid, who had access to blank voucher forms and the police stamp, wrote out two payment vouchers in the amount of one thousand two hundred dollars and nine hundred and fifty dollars to Charles Andrews. The payments were purportedly for the supply of food and drinks to the Police Department from December fourteenth to the twenty-first, 1998 and from January eleventh to the fifteenth of 1999. Police say Andrews, who is Reid’s friend and neighbor on Raccoon Street in Belize City, received the vouchers on two separate occasions. He the cashed the vouchers at the Belize City Sub Treasury and was paid with Belize Bank checks. The checks were later cashed by both Andrews and Reid. When News Five contacted Belmopan police to find out if the Police Department normally gets food and drinks from Charles Andrews, we were informed that no, this had never occurred and what’s more, it was not only the Police Department which got scammed but Andrews himself. In fact, police say it was Andrews who alerted them to the fraud. According to the police, their investigation reveals that Reid somehow convinced her friend that she was supplying food and drinks to the police, but because she works with the Police Accounts Department, there would be a conflict of interest if the vouchers were written in her name. The police say in order to help her out, Andrews agreed to have his name put on the vouchers. But after he received the second payment, police say he became concerned and wondered if what he was doing was legal. Andrews then visited the city’s Sub Treasury to ask them to inquire into the matter. Police say it was at this point that the voucher numbers were cross-checked with the Police Department and it was discovered a crime had been committed right under their noses. Reid, who had been employed with the Police Department for one year, has been charged with two counts of forgery, claiming upon a forged document, uttering a false document and false accounting. She is due to appear in Belmopan Magistrate’s Court on Friday. Charles Andrews will not be charged with any offenses.