Mark Bas­sant

At least ten peo­ple, in­clud­ing per­son­nel from the Trinidad and To­ba­go De­fence Force, have been de­tained and mil­lions of dol­lars re­cov­ered from what po­lice say is an il­le­gal pyra­mid scheme based in La Hor­quet­ta.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors told Guardian Me­dia that the ex­er­cise, co-or­di­nat­ed by Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, ACP for Crime Jayson Forde and Sen Supt Ramkhelawan along with of­fi­cers from the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team(SORT) un­der Sgt Mark Her­nan­dez, went to the La Hor­quet­ta apart­ment short­ly af­ter 10 am Tues­day.

Of­fi­cers act­ing on in­for­ma­tion ex­e­cut­ed a war­rant at the apart­ment lo­cat­ed at 516 Kath­leen Warn­er Dri­ve.

Dur­ing their search, po­lice sources told Guardian Me­dia that they found huge sums of mon­ey hid­den in the ceil­ing of the apart­ment, as well as a near­by wa­ter tank and oth­er ar­eas.

"It’s a lot of mon­ey and looks like mil­lions. The mon­ey was every­where," one source dis­closed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors al­so ap­pre­hend­ed at least ten peo­ple, some of whom are serv­ing mem­bers of the T&T De­fence Force. The of­fi­cers be­lieve the cash may be re­lat­ed to mon­ey laun­der­ing ac­tiv­i­ties by key per­sons held dur­ing the raid.

Up to a short while ago the area was still cor­doned off and sev­er­al lawyers had al­so ar­rived on the scene, sources said.

The fa­ther of one of the peo­ple de­tained said he has been on the scene since his daugh­ter was de­tained but up un­til 1 pm he had not been told why his daugh­ter was ar­rest­ed.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the main sus­pect is al­leged to be run­ning the biggest "sou sou" group in the coun­try. To join, mem­bers must al­leged­ly pay in $10,000 to re­ceive $56,000 in re­turn.

A new group was start­ed on Sat­ur­day morn­ing and Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands there are al­most 8,000 mem­bers.

On­ly re­cent­ly, Guardian Me­dia had run a se­ries of sto­ries about the dan­gers of the pyra­mid scheme.

Sev­er­al reg­u­la­to­ry au­thor­i­ties, in­clud­ing the In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU), Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CBTT) and the Fi­nan­cial Sys­tem Reg­u­la­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties had joint­ly is­sued an ad­vi­so­ry urg­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic about joint­ing "pyra­mid schemes."

In re­cent months, mem­bers of the pub­lic have been en­cour­aged to join these schemes via the so­cial me­dia plat­form of What­sapp or by face to face con­tact with an in­di­vid­ual. These schemes, au­thor­i­ties warned, false­ly take the shape of new in­vest­ments or even "sou sou" arrange­ments in oth­er cas­es.

This is a de­vel­op­ing sto­ry which will be up­dat­ed as more in­for­ma­tion be­comes avail­able.