Four peo­ple are fac­ing charges for false­ly claim­ing to be po­lice of­fi­cers when they ap­plied for their US tourist visas. 

A state­ment from the US Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day re­vealed that a 24-year-old woman was ar­rest­ed at the em­bassy it­self at Mar­li Street, and two oth­er sus­pects, a 63-year-old man and a 43-year-old woman, were ar­rest­ed at their homes on Ju­ly 2.

The fourth ac­cused, a 34-year-old woman, was ar­rest­ed at her home yes­ter­day. The US Em­bassy said all will be charged with pro­vid­ing fraud­u­lent doc­u­men­ta­tion in sup­port of visa ap­pli­ca­tions and false­ly claim­ing to be TTPS po­lice of­fi­cers. Ac­cord­ing to the state­ment, US Am­bas­sador Can­dace Bond said, “The ar­rests are a demon­stra­tion of the unique team­work be­tween the TTPS and the US Em­bassy’s fed­er­al agents with the Diplo­mat­ic Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice. The ar­rests send a mes­sage to any­one in­tend­ing to fal­si­fy doc­u­ments or mis­rep­re­sent them­selves to ob­tain a US visa through de­ceit that US fed­er­al agents will work along­side lo­cal law en­force­ment to ar­rest and pros­e­cute them. Com­mit­ting fraud when ap­ply­ing for a US visa will re­sult in the per­pe­tra­tor be­ing per­ma­nent­ly in­el­i­gi­ble for a tourist visa.”

The sus­pects will ap­pear be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate to an­swer the charges. The US Em­bassy al­so ad­vised the pub­lic not to pay peo­ple who promise to help ob­tain a US visa. 

It said on­ly US Em­bassy con­sular of­fi­cers could ad­ju­di­cate visa ap­pli­ca­tions. It al­so re­mind­ed the pub­lic ap­ply­ing for visas to vis­it le­git­i­mate web­sites—https://tt.usem­bassy.gov/ and https://trav­el.state.gov/con­tent/trav­el.html– for de­tails on the visa ap­pli­ca­tion process.