Guyanese woman jailed for fraud

“The law says one year and that is what you will get. This is the maximum penalty.”

Those were the words uttered by Senior Magistrate Carl Joseph, as he handed down the full force of the law on Gesona Boan, a 31-year-old Guyanese woman, on Monday, June 13, 2005, at the Kingstown Magistrate’s Court. {{more}}

The court heard that on Tuesday, June 9, 2005, PC Andrews, an Immigration Officer was on duty at the ET Joshua airport when he received information from Barbadian authorities that someone had a suspicious-looking Vincentian passport.

The court further heard that Boan, who also carries the name Gestricia Wedding, left Guyana on June 7, 2005 for St. Lucia with an inter-Caribbean travel document issued by the Republic of Guyana, and on June 9, 2005 travelled to Barbados bound for Canada, using a Vincentian passport. It was at that point that Barbados immigration officials ended her journey. She was then sent to St. Vincent since she carried a Vincentian passport.

Boan had never set foot on Vincentian soil until this incident.

The police official also told the court that, while conducting a search of Boan’s luggage after she arrived here, they found on her a Vincentian passport and ID card bearing the name Bestitia Llewellyn with her picture replacing the original.

The police official said that investigations revealed that Bestitia Llewellyn is indeed a Vincentian who is alive and well. The police officer also told the

court that Llewellyn had reported the loss of her documents since 2002.

According to the police, another person is still at large. The police inspector told the court that although Boan never set foot on this island, she had received a passport and ID card of a Vincentian who is still alive.

The question is, who could have supplied the documents? The police said they were currently carrying out investigations based on information supplied by the accused into the identity of the supplier of the fradulent documents.