A 40-year-old man, of no fixed place of abode, has ap­peared be­fore a San Fer­nan­do Mag­is­trate, af­ter be­ing charged with lar­ce­ny amount­ing to $51,000, af­ter promis­ing to im­port and de­liv­er ve­hi­cles to sev­er­al vic­tims.

Pe­ter Ma­haraj aka ‘Dim­itri Saint’ and ‘Shiv­nar­ine Sood­wah’, who has had over 25 fraud­u­lent charges laid against him in the past, ap­peared be­fore Mag­is­trate In­dar Ja­groo on Wednes­day.

Ma­haraj was charged with lar­ce­ny in the amounts of $26,000, $10,000, $10,000, and $5,000, from four vic­tims in San Fer­nan­do.

He was grant­ed $80,000 bail with sure­ty and is due to reap­pear in court on Wednes­day 24th Ju­ly 2019.

Dur­ing the pe­ri­od Wednes­day 3rd and Tues­day 9th April 2019, the ac­cused is al­leged to have ob­tained the cash from the vic­tims by pur­port­ing that he was able to im­port and de­liv­er ve­hi­cles on their be­half.

It was lat­er learnt that Ma­haraj was not in a po­si­tion to do same and re­quests for re­im­burse­ment proved fu­tile.

As a re­sult, sev­er­al re­ports were made to the Fraud Squad, lead­ing to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion be­ing launched and su­per­vised by Snr. Supt. Greenidge, of the Fraud Squad.

Ma­haraj was ar­rest­ed on Sun­day 7th Ju­ly 2019, and sub­se­quent­ly charged by Sgt. (Ag.) Badree, of the Fraud Squad, on Wednes­day 10th Ju­ly 2019.