A 52-year-old man was fined $4,000 by a Princes Town Mag­is­trate on Thurs­day, af­ter he plead­ed guilty to the of­fence of ob­tain­ing the sum of $16,000 by false pre­tence.

Rod­ney Sa­tar was charged with the of­fence when he ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate In­di­ra Misir-Go­sine, in the Princes Town First Mag­is­trates’ Court, on Thurs­day.

He plead­ed guilty to the charge and was or­dered to pay com­pen­sa­tion in the sum of $16,000. The ac­cused was al­so fined $4,000 for the of­fence with four months to re­pay or in de­fault, nine months’ hard labour.

A vic­tim re­port­ed to po­lice that be­tween the pe­ri­od No­vem­ber 6, 2021 and Jan­u­ary 13, 2022, they paid sums to­talling $16,000 to

a man, rep­re­sent­ing a down pay­ment to­wards the pur­chase of a par­cel of land val­ued at $80,0000 lo­cat­ed at Cunu­pia.

The vic­tim lat­er dis­cov­ered the man was not in a po­si­tion to sell the land and at­tempts to have the mon­ey re­fund­ed proved fu­tile. In­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ter were launched by the Fraud Squad, San Fer­nan­do Of­fice, which re­sult­ed in an ex­er­cise spear­head­ed by ASP Craig be­ing con­duct­ed on Tues­day 24th Jan­u­ary, 2023.

Dur­ing the ex­er­cise one male sus­pect was ar­rest­ed. Sa­tar was charged with the of­fence on Wednes­day 25 Jan­u­ary, 2023 by PC Sooroo­j­paul, al­so of Fraud Squad, San Fer­nan­do.