Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les

@guardian.co.tt

The long­ing for a home is at the heart of a scheme be­ing per­pet­u­at­ed by peo­ple pre­tend­ing to be pub­lic of­fi­cers in­side the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

A Guardian Me­dia in­ves­ti­ga­tion over the course of sev­er­al weeks showed the op­er­a­tion close­ly mir­rors the of­fi­cial HDC process of ap­ply­ing for a home, which shrouds the scheme with an air of le­git­i­ma­cy at every stage.

The process be­gan with a Face­book ad­ver­tise­ment of­fer­ing two-bed­room HDC homes for $300,000 and $375,000, with a $12,000 down pay­ment and what seemed like sus­pi­cious­ly low month­ly in­stal­ments.

To par­tic­i­pate in the process, a mem­ber of the Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk posed as a den­tal as­sis­tant and sin­gle moth­er of four who is rent­ing and des­per­ate­ly seek­ing a home.

When Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk con­tact­ed the num­ber, the per­son on the oth­er end in­sist­ed on What­sApp mes­sag­ing and cre­at­ed a sense of ur­gency, claim­ing lim­it­ed avail­abil­i­ty.

De­spite there be­ing no ap­pli­ca­tion on record, a call came in from the num­ber for a 10 am ap­point­ment set at HDC’s Port-of-Spain of­fice.

A form was then sent from a Gmail ad­dress — hd­c­man­age­mentlead@gmail.com — with in­struc­tions to com­plete it and walk with for the meet­ing.

The next step mir­rored of­fi­cial pro­ce­dure: a re­quest for a ref­er­ence num­ber to “pull the file,” fol­lowed by a re­fer­ral to a “man­ag­er.”

The “man­ag­er”— a male who sub­se­quent­ly iden­ti­fied him­self as a Mr Khan— made con­tact on What­sApp and con­tin­ued via a call.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk record­ed this ex­change.

Guardian Me­dia: “How much is the down pay­ment?”

Mr Khan at HDC: “$13,000. Mal­abar would be good for you?”

Guardian Me­dia: “I would take any­thing I could get at this point… Who do I ask for when I come (to HDC)?”

Mr Khan at HDC: “Just call me or ask for Mr Khan.”

Guardian Me­dia: “Not sure I would get through. I am wor­ried I won’t get through be­cause I don’t have an ap­pli­ca­tion in­side.”

Mr Khan at HDC: “Nah, once you do up that thing and you come in this morn­ing, we will or­gan­ise. You don’t wor­ry. Con­cern­ing the down pay­ment, you have it or you don’t have it, so we would know what to do.”

Guardian Me­dia: “Is it that I’m mak­ing pay­ment one time to­day?”

Mr Khan at HDC: “Yeah, you’re mak­ing pay­ments one time be­cause those (units) giv­ing out…they’re giv­ing it out re­mem­ber this new par­ty (UNC) not play­ing; units gave out all last week.”

He then in­struct­ed: “Send me the ID and the ad­dress… I’m go­ing to start to do up every­thing now.”

The process halt­ed when pay­ment was re­quired be­fore any view­ing or meet­ing.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk made no pay­ment but con­firmed through the reg­u­lar phone sys­tem that there was a Mr Khan at HDC’s of­fice in Port-of-Spain.

The of­fer was a $13,000 down pay­ment with an ad­di­tion­al $5,200 for le­gal fees and the op­tion to pay $1,800 or $2,500 month­ly in­stal­ment.

No face, no case?

What Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk en­coun­tered re­flects what vic­tims de­scribe — a sys­tem that fol­lows HDC’s re­al work­flow close­ly enough to re­move sus­pi­cion.

One vic­tim said she lost close to $20,000 af­ter be­ing tak­en through what ap­peared to be a le­git­i­mate process.

“The in­for­ma­tion, what they were ask­ing… it was the same re­quire­ments that HDC re­quires.”

She said she ver­i­fied one of the names be­ing used. “I went in­to HDC and ver­i­fied that the per­son was work­ing there… it was con­firmed,” she claimed.

She was asked for stan­dard doc­u­ments and in­struct­ed to pay.

“He had giv­en me a HDC ac­count num­ber to put the mon­ey through… he end­ed up send­ing me a re­ceipt.”

She was as­signed a spe­cif­ic prop­er­ty in River­side South and vis­it­ed it. “I went on the prop­er­ty… all of that made me feel that this was some­thing that was le­git.”

Re­peat­ed de­lays raised con­cern. “Every time they keep telling me that

I have to come and col­lect my keys… I was be­ing run around.”

A sec­ond vic­tim de­scribed the same struc­ture — Face­book con­tact, What­sApp-on­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and mul­ti­ple in­di­vid­u­als pos­ing as HDC per­son­nel.

“So there… I was scrolling through Face­book… rel­a­tive to rent-to-own homes avail­able in the Mal­abar area. I nev­er spoke to the per­son or heard the per­son’s voice; every­thing was via What­sApp mes­sages.”

She was told to make a de­posit. “I had to de­posit it in­to an ac­count, which I went and did.”

Then more pay­ments.

“Af­ter he said $5,200 for le­gal fees… I did that as well.”

What con­vinced her was that the phys­i­cal de­tails aligned. “When I went, ex­act­ly what they told me is what was there… the in­for­ma­tion they are giv­ing is re­al­ly cred­i­ble in­for­ma­tion.”

She was tak­en to a site in Mal­abar and told to choose a unit.

Doc­u­ments fol­lowed.

“They sent me an ap­proval let­ter with HDC head­ing… and al­so sent me a re­ceipt… with HDC on it.”

She paid a to­tal of $29,400 across mul­ti­ple ac­counts.

“It was about five dif­fer­ent ac­counts.”

The scheme main­tained con­trol by di­rect­ing her to the HDC of­fices, but no one ever met her.

“I went about three or four times…I wait­ed down­stairs. They will com­mu­ni­cate with me by What­sApp.”

The de­cep­tion col­lapsed on­ly when she ap­proached re­al HDC staff. “When I re­alised like it was a full thing, I went to the re­cep­tion­ist… and she laughed and said, ‘Ma’am, you was scammed.’”

She said the staff in­di­cat­ed the vol­ume of cas­es. “They said you ac­tu­al­ly have about six to sev­en peo­ple com­ing week­ly to make these re­ports.”

Even then, the net­work con­tin­ued. “He want­ed an ad­di­tion­al $18,000.”

At one stage, she was giv­en ac­cess to a unit.

“They left the key on unit 10 door… I opened the house… the house is ba­si­cal­ly in­com­plete. They use the same phone num­bers; they just keep chang­ing their name.”

Decade old scams

For al­most a decade, scam­mers have been run­ning a mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar par­al­lel hous­ing sys­tem claim­ing to be HDC, repli­cat­ing in­ter­nal process­es, “ac­cess­ing” files us­ing on­ly ref­er­ence num­bers, us­ing re­al staff names and, in some cas­es, ac­cess­ing ac­tu­al HDC units — a lev­el of so­phis­ti­ca­tion that po­lice say is now rais­ing con­cerns about pos­si­ble in­ter­nal links.

A po­lice source said the con­cern is how close­ly the op­er­a­tion mir­rors in­ter­nal sys­tems.

“All of­fi­cial pay­ments to HDC are sup­posed to be made at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of­fices. Nowhere else. You’re not sup­posed to de­posit mon­ey to peo­ple’s ac­count.”

The process be­ing repli­cat­ed is spe­cif­ic. He said scam­mers ac­cess files of those who would have re­ceived HDC ap­provals, call them and re­quest ad­di­tion­al pay­ment.

“And then you’re go­ing to the pool… they will sched­ule an in­ter­view… and de­cide whether they’re giv­ing you a house or not.”

In­ves­ti­ga­tors say the back­log is be­ing ex­ploit­ed.

“Now with the HDC, there’s a back­log… that cre­ates the op­por­tu­ni­ty for per­sons to en­gage in full ac­tiv­i­ties.”

Po­lice records show the scam has al­ready led to ar­rests and charges, but the method has con­tin­ued with lit­tle change.

In one 2024 case, three sus­pects were ar­rest­ed at HDC’s head of­fice af­ter at­tempt­ing to use fake con­tracts bear­ing forged sig­na­tures of se­nior of­fi­cials to ex­tract mon­ey from vic­tims.

In an­oth­er case, a 33-year-old man was charged with mul­ti­ple counts of mon­ey laun­der­ing and lar­ce­ny af­ter re­ceiv­ing de­posits from a vic­tim who be­lieved he could se­cure a house from HDC.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said funds were di­rect­ed in­to per­son­al bank ac­counts un­der the guise of down pay­ments and pro­cess­ing fees.

Oth­er re­ports point to mul­ti­ple vic­tims and co­or­di­nat­ed groups us­ing the same ap­proach — im­per­son­ation, of­fi­cial brand­ing and off-sys­tem pay­ments.

Po­lice said the cen­tral is­sue now is whether there is an in­ter­nal breach en­abling ac­cess to this lev­el of de­tail — from ap­pli­ca­tion process­es to va­cant units.

Across all cas­es, the pat­tern was the same: vic­tims nev­er met any­one in per­son.

Meet­ings were set at HDC’s Port-of-Spain of­fice, but the “man­ag­er” or “of­fi­cer” would al­ways say they were run­ning late and kept every­thing on What­sApp.

Keys were promised but nev­er prop­er­ly hand­ed over — vic­tims were told keys were left on doors, or passed through oth­er peo­ple. In some cas­es, one vic­tim was asked to give a key to an­oth­er, with promis­es of a big­ger unit. Pay­ments were nev­er col­lect­ed in cash.

Vic­tims in­clud­ed teach­ers, sec­re­taries, doc­tors and even po­lice of­fi­cers — all try­ing to se­cure hous­ing. Fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tors said the scale and con­sis­ten­cy make this one of the more ac­tive scams in the coun­try and said stop­ping it will de­pend on HDC iden­ti­fy­ing any in­ter­nal link be­ing used.

Over the years, HDC has launched a pub­lic warn­ing cam­paign, stat­ing that it does not use agents to sell or fast-track hous­ing and does not con­duct trans­ac­tions through so­cial me­dia or pri­vate ac­counts.

It has re­peat­ed­ly ad­vised that all pay­ments must be made at its of­fices and that any ap­proach out­side of­fi­cial chan­nels should be treat­ed as fraud­u­lent.