A Laven­tille man is due to ap­pear in court af­ter be­ing charged with mon­ey laun­der­ing fol­low­ing a cy­ber-en­abled fraud in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day, the TTPS said on Fri­day, Au­gust 29, Ma­lik Wyne of Bev­er­ly Hills, Laven­tille, was for­mal­ly charged by Woman Po­lice Con­sta­ble Williams of the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch (FIB) un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act.

The case stemmed from a re­port made on Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 13, when a vic­tim dis­cov­ered $45,000 had been un­law­ful­ly trans­ferred from her bank ac­count af­ter she clicked a fraud­u­lent link sent via text mes­sage.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors traced $40,000 of the stolen funds to a point-of-sale trans­ac­tion at a Ma­coya busi­ness, link­ing Wyne to the al­leged ac­tiv­i­ty.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion was co­or­di­nat­ed by DCP In­tel­li­gence and In­ves­ti­ga­tions Suzette Mar­tin and ACP De­nis Knutt, with the op­er­a­tion led by Snr Supt Avinash Singh and Supt Rawle Ramdeo.

In the state­ment the TTPS urged the pub­lic to re­main vig­i­lant when re­ceiv­ing un­so­licit­ed mes­sages.

It said fraud­u­lent links via text or email can give crim­i­nals ac­cess to per­son­al and fi­nan­cial in­for­ma­tion, of­ten re­sult­ing in sub­stan­tial loss­es.

The po­lice ser­vice ad­vised cit­i­zens to ver­i­fy all mes­sages claim­ing to be from banks, avoid click­ing sus­pi­cious links, and re­port any sus­pect­ed fraud to the near­est po­lice sta­tion.

The TTPS said it will con­tin­ue to ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue those who ex­ploit vul­ner­a­ble in­di­vid­u­als.