THREE SCAMMERS TO PAY TOTAL OF $1.9 MILLION OR GO TO PRISON

THE three key players in the Manchester-based debit and credit card scam ring — which police investigators said was one of the biggest in the island — are to return to the Manchester Parish Court on January 6 to fork out a combined $1.9 million in fines or face jail time.

The men, Tetlow Frith, the alleged mastermind, Carlos Burton and Jermaine Vernon were in October this year found guilty of several breaches each of the Cybercrimes Act and were to be sentenced on December 8. Frith was found guilty on nine counts, Carlos Burton one count, and Jermaine Vernon six counts.

When Frith returns to court next month he will be ordered to pay $1 million or spend 18 months behind bars, while Burton has been ordered to pay $200,000 or spend six months in prison, and Vernon fined $700,000.

Senior Parish Judge Desiree Alleyne, who handed down the sentences yesterday, said she would indicate the alternative imprisonment term for Vernon on January 6, based on the fact that Vernon in 2003 was charged for fraudulent conversion.

In the meantime, last-ditch efforts by attorneys for the men to delay the sentencing by bargaining for more time to make their plea and mitigation addresses was denied by the judge, who indicated that the matter had already been before her for too long. On December 8, when the judge would have ruled, one defence attorney was absent while the other indicated that he was not ready to proceed. The matter was rescheduled to yesterday but faced the same set of circumstances, the judge said.

In the meantime, she explained that she had not come down heavier on the men in relation to the jail time or fines due to the length of time it took for the matter to conclude. Yesterday the men, in their social enquiry reports, pleaded for the court to be lenient, however, none of them denied the offences with which they were charged. The men further expressed regret while detailing the impact their conflict with the law had on their families.

The trial, which began in 2013, was hampered by a number of delays. In addition, key exhibits such as embossing machines, card printers, credit cards bearing other people’s names, computer hard drives, and flash drives taken from the men were all destroyed in the mysterious 2019 fire which damaged the Manchester Parish Court, where the matter was being tried originally. In addition, the original investigating officer left the constabulary and migrated, as well as other witnesses relied on by the Crown.

Prosecutors relied on several live witnesses and the statement of a cashier who also went missing during the trial. The cashier, who was employed to a cinema in the parish, in a statement to investigators, said Frith, whom he knew, approached him sometime in September 2010 and purchased movie tickets. He said Frith met up with him later that night in the company of two other men and he was given a small device with a split in the middle and instructed to swipe credit cards in it as he processed ticket payments. He made several such swipes over time, and on these occasions he would be visited by Frith and his two counterparts. Frith, he said, would attach the device to his laptop and download the information to the computer. He explained that Frith on one occasion brought him to his house and showed him items he had used to skim information to generate cards, which he then used to purchase several items including stereo sets, steel for construction and TV sets.

During searches of premises occupied by the men the police recovered several items, among them credit cards, several pieces of identification bearing images of the accused with varying names, credit card manufacturing equipment, credit card cloning equipment, and other data access devices.

An expert prosecution witness in digital cyber forensics told the court that analysis of all the items submitted to him led to the conclusion “that the skimmed information, the volume of the items, the amount of identity information retrieved from various credit cards and debit cards, the different machines used in accordance with credit card skimming and reproduction, and the several other paraphernalia, all the machines and data, were used in illicit production of credit cards by cybercriminals”.

In supporting this view, he said, firstly, the data from the cards needed to be captured using a portable skimmer that would be given to a collector or actor to capture the data from unsuspecting victims. He went on to say that it was his expert opinion that the entirety of the items in evidence could produce the general credit/debit cards. In addition, he said the holograms on the cards could not have come into the country legally and would have had to be smuggled in. He added that the cost of the items, when last he checked in 2011, were in the region of thousands of United States dollars and that he had never seen so much of the equipment in one place.

The Crown was represented by Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Christine Spence and Crown Counsel Hodine Williams.