Carisa Lee

With chil­dren, a wife and a sta­ble ca­reer, one mem­ber of the T&T De­fence Force saw his next step as liv­ing in a house he could call his own.

So when the op­por­tu­ni­ty to own a Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) home came knock­ing at door of his par­ents’ house, where he cur­rent­ly re­sides, he an­swered.

“Some­body I know come and they put the man on to me ... he was so con­vinc­ing and the per­son was back­ing up every­thing he was say­ing,” the man, who asked not to be named, said.

In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, the man was scammed of $24,000 by some­one called Thomas who posed as an HDC man­ag­er pro­cess­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion.

“He told me he could pro­vide me with a sin­gle unit at the price of 400,000 thou­sand dol­lars and the down pay­ment would be 20,000 and the lawyer fees 4,000,” the TTDF mem­ber ex­plained.

The unit, he said, is lo­cat­ed in Ari­ma and he and his fam­i­ly were blown away by the ear­ly pre­sen­ta­tion of doc­u­men­ta­tion for their prospec­tive home.

“He send pic­tures every­thing,” the man said, ad­mit­ting they nev­er phys­i­cal­ly went to the house’s lo­ca­tion.

Ear­li­er this week, the HDC warned cit­i­zens about scam­mers as the cor­po­ra­tion an­nounced dozens of peo­ple had been de­fraud­ed of some $48,000 in the last month.

HDC man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Brent Lyons told Guardian Me­dia he was very con­cerned hous­ing ap­pli­cants were be­ing ripped off dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, adding one vic­tim had paid $18,000 in cash to a fraud­ster. Lyons said the fraud­sters had an elab­o­rate scam and had been tak­ing pho­tos of sin­gle units, town­hous­es and apart­ments from the HDC’s web­site, most of which are in ad­vanced stages of con­struc­tion and us­ing them to con­vince their un­sus­pect­ing vic­tims that their files were be­ing processed.

The vic­tim Guardian Me­dia spoke to yes­ter­day said he was aware of such scam­mers but not­ed that the doc­u­ments the man he came on­ly to know as Thomas pre­sent­ed to him seemed le­git­i­mate.

HDC House Scam

“They so con­vinc­ing and how they com­ing at you, any­body would get catch,” he said.

He said he got three doc­u­ments from Thomas; a let­ter of ap­proval with the HDC’s let­ter­head and let­ters with Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) sig­nage on them.

“I was told not to take pic­tures of it, I would be giv­en a copy but I still take it up­on my­self and take the pic­tures,” he said.

The scam vic­tim said Thomas al­so sent mes­sages with up­dates of when the key dis­tri­b­u­tion process would be­gin. The first date was on Sep­tem­ber 14 but that date then moved to Sep­tem­ber 17 and 28 and fi­nal­ly to Oc­to­ber 1.

The fi­nal mes­sage he re­ceived from the fraud­ster on Sep­tem­ber 30 read, “Good evening ap­pli­cants, un­for­tu­nate­ly, we’re un­able to de­liv­er pack­ages at this time I’m try­ing my best to help every per­son putting my job on the line.”

He said he first re­alised some­thing was wrong when he had to meet the man called Thomas at HDC’s head­quar­ters in Port-of-Spain but in­stead was told to meet with his as­sis­tant, a woman named Lisa. How­ev­er, the man said he re­alised some­thing was amiss when Lisa ap­peared to be wear­ing a dis­guise.

“When you go to meet the as­sis­tant, the as­sis­tant was dressed in a hi­jab with a mask cov­er­ing her face,” he said.

The TTDF mem­ber said since then, when he calls the num­ber he nor­mal­ly used to com­mu­ni­cate with Thomas, it rings but no one an­swers. He said some­one an­swered an­oth­er num­ber he had but told him he had the wrong con­tact. When he sends mes­sages via What­sApp to the num­bers they al­so re­main un­de­liv­ered.

What makes the vic­tim’s sit­u­a­tion worse is that he bor­rowed the $24,000 from his grand­moth­er to make the ini­tial pay­ment.

“I swal­low my pride,” he said.

The vic­tim said he was scammed by a net­work and not­ed he’s not the on­ly one.

Some of his col­leagues were al­so ap­proached and they paid out more be­fore re­al­is­ing some­thing was wrong.

“It have a se­ries of mes­sages where peo­ple get through be­fore and dates when they sup­posed to give out keys,” he ex­plained.

How­ev­er, he said he reached out to Guardian Me­dia af­ter see­ing oth­er re­ports on the mat­ter ear­li­er this week be­cause he now wants to en­sure no one else be­comes a vic­tim.

“Even though how des­per­ate you might be, don’t fall for it,” he con­tin­ued.

HDC Scam

In tears, the man had one mes­sage for Mr Thomas.

“You get through,” he mum­bled.

He said he has since made a re­port to the T&T Po­lice’s Ser­vice’s Fraud Squad.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to HDC’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Dike Noel for an up­date on the sit­u­a­tion yes­ter­day but he di­rect­ed us to the TTPS’ Fraud Squad for an up­date on the sta­tus of their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Noel al­so en­cour­aged cit­i­zens who may have been vic­tims or al­most been vic­tims of such scams to go di­rect­ly to the po­lice.