Three peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed for at­tempt­ing to de­fraud two busi­ness­men by pre­tend­ing to be em­ploy­ees of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).

Af­ter at­tempt­ing to con the men of their mon­ey on Mon­day, the three sus­pects were ap­pre­hend­ed by po­lice yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the HDC, the two busi­ness­men said they were swin­dled by two men pur­port­ing to be HDC em­ploy­ees, who pre­sent­ed them with what ap­peared to be HDC con­tracts in ex­change for an undis­closed amount of mon­ey.

The bo­gus con­tracts were com­plete with the forged sig­na­ture of HDC’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Jay­selle Mc­Far­lane.

The busi­ness­men said de­spite giv­ing the sus­pects a cheque, they had their sus­pi­cions that the doc­u­ments could be fake.

As such, they de­cid­ed to vis­it HDC’s head of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day for con­fir­ma­tion.

This was where HDC’s head of se­cu­ri­ty con­firmed the doc­u­ments were fraud­u­lent.

In a turn of events, the two en­tre­pre­neurs con­vinced the fake em­ploy­ees to vis­it them at the HDC head of­fice to re­ceive ad­di­tion­al funds, giv­ing them a dose of their own med­i­cine.

When the men com­plied, they were ar­rest­ed by of­fi­cers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the HDC said, “The sus­pects, pur­port­ing to be bonafide em­ploy­ees of the HDC, pre­sent­ed the two en­tre­pre­neurs with HDC con­tracts. The con­trac­tors gave the men a cheque but sus­pect­ed the doc­u­ments were fake. On Tues­day, the con­trac­tors lured the sus­pects to the HDC of­fice with promise of ad­di­tion­al funds. How­ev­er, the sus­pects were caught, ar­rest­ed and tak­en in­to cus­tody.”

Two of the sus­pects were held in a carpark and one was held in a ve­hi­cle which was wait­ing near­by.

The re­lease said HDC’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor was ap­palled by the in­ci­dent, ex­press­ing con­cern that her sig­na­ture would be used in this way.

She urged con­trac­tors to re­frain from con­duct­ing fi­nan­cial trans­ac­tions in lo­ca­tions oth­er than HDC build­ings.

Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is was dis­ap­point­ed at the sus­pects who at­tempt­ed to de­ceive the con­trac­tors, steal their mon­ey and sul­ly the rep­u­ta­tion of the HDC in the process.

HDC’s chair­man Noel Gar­cia al­so com­mend­ed HDC’s head of se­cu­ri­ty and po­lice for their swift ac­tion, which led to the cap­ture and ar­rest of the three men.

The HDC al­so said over the past few weeks, there had been a surge of hope­ful home­own­ers be­ing swin­dled by fraud­sters who false­ly claimed to be able to pro­vide HDC homes.

It em­pha­sised that it did not pro­vide hous­es in ex­change for cash and all trans­ac­tions were done strict­ly at its Port-of-Spain head of­fice, San Fer­nan­do of­fice and Mal­oney of­fice.