On­line trans­fers and bank de­posits to the Prison Ser­vice's bank ac­count for can­teen pur­chas­es re­sume to­day, Mon­day 27 Feb­ru­ary 2023.

In ad­di­tion, Linx trans­ac­tions at the Gold­en Grove Prison al­so re­sume to­day.

An of­fi­cial state­ment from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Prison Ser­vice con­firms that its ac­count at Re­pub­lic Bank will be ac­cept­ing such trans­ac­tions once more.

"Fol­low­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice in­to fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties by cus­tomers with their re­ceipts, we are sat­is­fied with the ac­tion tak­en and mea­sures have been im­ple­ment­ed to al­le­vi­ate same," the Prison Ser­vice stat­ed in the re­lease.

The Prison Ser­vice is ad­vis­ing the pub­lic that when us­ing the on­line or bank de­posit fa­cil­i­ty, the fol­low­ing in­for­ma­tion must be placed in the de­scrip­tion bar or at the back of the re­ceipt:

   ●   In­mate's name

   ●   In­mate's lo­ca­tion

   ●   In­mate's clas­si­fi­ca­tion (i.e. re­mand­ed or con­vict­ed)

In Ju­ly 2022, the Prison Ser­vice sus­pend­ed all on­line trans­fers and de­posits to its Re­pub­lic Bank ac­count, fol­low­ing the dis­cov­ery of a se­ries of fraud­u­lent trans­ac­tions by pris­on­ers ac­cess­ing the can­teen ser­vice.

“Some cus­tomers were at­tempt­ing fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties, where they were pho­to­copy­ing re­ceipts and sub­mit­ting it to us to sort of get twice and even three times the amount of mon­ey that was de­posit­ed,” act­ing Pris­ons Com­mis­sion­er De­op­er­sad Ra­moutar told Guardian Me­dia in a tele­phone in­ter­view con­cern­ing the mat­ter, last year.

Both the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and Re­pub­lic Bank of­fi­cials launched a probe in­to the mat­ter.

On Sat­ur­day 25 Feb­ru­ary 2023, the Prison Ser­vice re­leased a state­ment in­di­cat­ing that fol­low­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, on­line and Linx trans­ac­tions at the can­teen would re­sume on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 27.

For more con­text on this sto­ry, see “Prison can­teen fraud un­cov­ered”, here…

https://guardian.co.tt/news/prison-can­teen-fraud-un­cov­ered-6.2.1524545.a37590946e