Corozal resident scammed out of $35,000

The police have two cases of Obtaining Property by Deception to solve on their hands. In the first instance, a Corozal man was cheated out of a whopping thirty-five thousand dollars. Forty-one year old Crisologo Sosa of the Altamira area reported to police that in November of last year he purchased a parcel of land in the Rainbow Town Area from Michael Martinez for twenty thousand dollars. Sosa says he was later offered two more parcels for forty thousand dollars. He paid fifteen thousand towards those lots and the balance was due when the titles were transferred. But to Sosa’s dismay, when he visited the Lands Department in Belmopan, he found out that the lots were already sold.

Meanwhile in Belize City, a fruit and vegetable vendor was swindled out a smaller sum. Sixty-eight year old Teodoro Blanco of Charros Fruit and Vegetable at Farmers Market reported that a man visited his business on February nineteenth with a Belize City Council identification card and claimed to be collecting for trade licenses. The man returned on February twenty-first and told Blanco that his business had been assessed for four hundred dollars. Blanco gave the man a Scotiabank cheque, made out to the Belize City Council, for the requested amount. But when he received the cheque back from the bank he noticed a signature on it, indicating that it had been cashed.