Teen mum pretends to be cousin to get ID card

A 19-year-old mother who duped the electoral office into giving her a temporary Identification printout in her cousin’s name, was discovered after her cousin tried to open a FLOW Internet account.

Nineteen year old Cara Williams of Lowmans Windward or La Croix committed the offences of impersonation of another to, and giving false information to, a person employed in the public service in March, but this was not discovered until June.

As a result of her crimes, Williams was charged with, on March 6, giving an employee of the electoral office information “in the truth of which you did not believe”, namely that she is “Ainka Pope of Lowmans Windward”, intending that employee to grant a temporary record of the identification details of Ainka Pope of Lowmans Windward, “which she ought not to have done if the true state of facts that you are not Ainka Pope of Lowmans Windward, were known to her.”

Additionally, on the same date, she is charged that she, with the intention of defrauding the employee of the electoral office, falsely represented herself to be her cousin: Ainka Pope.

According to the facts of the matters, read at the Serious Offences Court (SOC), yesterday, August 10, Williams and Pope are cousins.

On June 29, Pope went to the FLOW office to open an Internet account for her home. However, later that day, the company called her to inform her that she had already opened an account and could not open another. The following day, Pope went in to the office herself, and was shown a St Vincent and the Grenadines Identification card print out with details of Ainka Pope. Since Pope was unaware of this account, she reported the matter to the police.

Later on during the day of the report, a party of police officers went to the FLOW office in Arnos Vale where they met Williams, who claimed to be Pope. They arrested her and took her along with the original St Vincent and the Grenadines Identification Printout to the station. She gave the police a statement admitting to these offences.

When the option of prison was pointed out, Williams told the magistrate that she has a one month old baby.

“I did not mean to do something like that,” the defendant said, commenting that she was sorry.

She did not have an answer for why she opened the account in her cousin’s name instead of her own.

Browne stood down the matter, and when she recalled the mother, who was outside with her newborn, she told her “I believe that you could appreciate that these are extremely serious [offences].”

The chief magistrate noted that the maximum time for the offences was one and three years incarceration.

Williams was bonded in the sum of $1500 for six months, with a default of six months imprisonment. She was also fined $900 to be paid by November 30, or she will go to prison for four months.