A 25-year-old woman of Go-Slow Avenue, North East La Penitence, Georgetown, implicated in a Facebook romance scam in which she pretended to be a man from England and defrauded a woman of $85,000, has been spared jail time after agreeing to compensate her victim.
The Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) reported that Susan Richards was charged with conspiracy to defraud when she appeared before Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts on Wednesday. She denied the charge and was remanded.
Later in the day, Richards, who was initially unrepresented, retained Attorney Eusi Anderson, who requested that the matter be recalled for him to make a bail application.
His request was granted, and during the proceedings, he informed the Chief Magistrate that his client and the victim have already agreed that Richards would repay the money.
With the money paid over immediately, the Chief Magistrate dismissed the charge against Richards, who is said to be pregnant, and also ordered her to pay $10,000 in court costs.
Richards, a sales representative, had received $85,000 from the victim in August of last year, after assuring the woman that she would receive a package containing expensive gift items from her Facebook ‘boyfriend’, SOCU said.
SOCU said that Richards is alleged to have acted as a third party for a person who had befriended the victim via Facebook. Richards is one of four persons to whom the victim had sent money.
Last week SOCU, charged John Patrick Lewis with the said offence; the victim had also sent money to him. The victim’s Facebook boyfriend provided her with all of Richards’s personal information, and she sent the money using Western Union money transfer.
To date, the victim has not received any package, and her Facebook boyfriend has disappeared.
The matter was investigated by SOCU, and Richards was arrested and charged.
It was only on July 15 that SOCU had instituted similar charges against John Patrick Lewis, of Lot 34 Williamsburg Village, Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne).
The Head of SOCU, Assistant Commissioner Fazil Karimbaksh, is once again calling on all Guyanese to be vigilant against the package delivery and romance scams.
He is also encouraging everyone to report such scams immediately.
