Man held for car scam

An alleged scammer is currently in police custody at the Central Police Station, according to Senior Superintendent of Police Stephanie Lindsay.

The man is alleged to have scammed persons of thousands of dollars, under the guise of sourcing cars for them from Japan.

Keisha* said she handed over more than J$650,000 for a car. “I gave him the deposit of $200,000. I made multiple deposits of $71,000 for five months. I gave him cash because he said he didn’t have an account and he sent me a receipt so I thought everything was legit,” she said. Keisha said she got suspicious after he continued to give excuses as to why she had not received the car. “Him even said to me that it had a delay due to COVID and I believed him, but then I stopped making payments because the car was purchased from February and it all now it can’t reach,” she said. Her investigations then led her to the man’s estranged wife, who revealed that others had complained about him. Keisha found six other persons. THE STAR spoke to two of them. One man said he was scammed of J$500,000 for a Toyota motor car. “Three years ago, I met him and went into a transaction and he was supposed to bring in a car for me from Japan.

Sleep over in the bushes

I gave him $400,000 first and then $100,000. All through that time we were good until a time for the car to reach to me,” said one man. “About a week him have me down a wharf a sit down. Every day a something different and no car.” The man said that he went to the address the alleged scammer gave him, but he was nowhere to be found. “Me use to sleep over in the bushes just to see if he would show up and all now I don’t see him until this day,” he said. “I even took out a summons and post him on Facebook but nothing.”

A woman said she met the accused in 2018 at a hotel, where he offered to facilitate a transaction to purchase a car for her birthday. “We went into a first transaction where he purchased some shirts from me and it came through,” she said. “He was then showing me a car he got and I was thinking about buying one and he offered to help me get it. I was OK with it because I did a transaction with him before.” She said he instructed her go on a car website and choose the vehicle, and he would do the transaction. “I deposit 300,000 and after I started asking him about the car, I couldn’t get any good answers,” she said. “So I call (the website) and them say they don’t know anything. That’s when I told him I was going to the police and since then I can’t hear from him; that was two years ago.”

*Name changed