Police outline expanding forgery scam
The trail of forged government cheques keeps getting longer and the amount of money a Dangriga con man and his accomplices allegedly scammed keeps growing … all proving the old adage that you can steal far more with a pen than with a gun. News Five’s Marion Ali has more.
Marion Ali, Reporting
Twenty-nine year old Lino Herrera, the man who gained attention this week for having conned businesses across the country out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, had a busy day today travelling from Belize City to Belmopan, then San Ignacio to face a growing string of forgery and related offences. This morning C.I.B. Head, Superintendent Aaron Guzman, shared the latest at a press conference in Belize City.
Supt. Aaron Guzman, Officer Commanding C.I.B.
“As it is Belmopan have charges for Lino Herrera right now and are looking at charges for other persons. I must tell you that in reference to one computer that was recovered in Dangriga and charges were laid against two persons there. Another computer has been recovered, this time in Independence from the same company, P.C.com in Belmopan. So this investigation where this scam is concerned will be going on I believe for a next week or so and from time to time we’ll be hopefully laying charges against the persons concerned. … There were other businesses that were defrauded in Belmopan, namely, Builders Hardware and Pappy’s.”
In San Ignacio, Herrera allegedly defrauded Western Tractors by purchasing a riding mower worth over five thousand dollars in July. That item was later recovered in Dangriga. Lino Herrera came to the public’s attention on Monday when he was first charged in connection with a cheque scam that defrauded merchants in Dangriga and Belize City. But police are not exactly sure how long Herrera has been bilking people and they continue to investigate reports as they come in.
Supt. Aaron Guzman
“As of half hour ago, there was another person coming in to make a complaint about a cheque that was issued to them earlier this year. So we will have to see if it is the same persons concerned, which would lead me then to believe that it’s been happening since earlier this year, I believe, probably April, May when we started getting complaints.”
“Most of these businesses did report the incidents, however, we could not pinpoint who it was and the names being used were not the names of the persons concerned.”
But Officer Commanding Eastern Division, Senior Superintendent Allen Whylie, said the businesses were fooled because Herrera did his transactions using government cheques that appeared legitimate.
Sr. Supt. Allen Whylie, O.C., Eastern Division Police
“In Belize we don’t have the requirement for a national identification system. Some businesses operate on an ad-hoc basis; some of them request an I.D. when you bring a cheque, others don’t request an I.D. And because it was allegedly a government cheque, I believe some businesses may have been lax in their requirement for an I.D., so things like that make it difficult for us to deal with these sort of cases.”
Reporting for News Five, Marion Ali.
In court this morning in Belize City, Herrera and Serrano were offered but could not meet bail of fifty thousand dollars. They were both remanded to prison until January twenty-first. Their charges involve a purchase of a sixty horsepower Yamaha outboard engine from Marelco in September. So far, according to police, Herrera has racked up fraudulent transactions amounting to almost three hundred thousand dollars.
