A wel­fare of­fi­cer ap­peared be­fore the High Court on Mon­day where she was grant­ed bail in the sum of $250,000, with sure­ty.

Deb­o­rah Grif­fith was ar­rest­ed and charged with 18 counts of ob­tain­ing monies by false pre­tences, 18 counts of mon­ey laun­der­ing, and 17 counts of ut­ter­ing a false doc­u­ment.

Grif­fith was or­dered to sur­ren­der her pass­port to the reg­is­trar of the Supreme Court by No­vem­ber 28, and was al­so or­dered to re­port to the po­lice sta­tion twice per month. The mat­ter has been ad­journed to March 11, 2025.

In­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that Grif­fith al­leged­ly ob­tained a loan of $146,530.44 to pur­chase a ve­hi­cle. How­ev­er, she failed to ac­quire the ve­hi­cle and used the funds for un­re­lat­ed pur­pos­es.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), in­quiries un­cov­ered that be­tween March 2014 and Ju­ly 2015, Grif­fith sub­mit­ted mul­ti­ple fraud­u­lent trav­el claims, pre­tend­ing to have pur­chased and owned a ve­hi­cle to re­ceive trav­el­ling ben­e­fits. The claims amount­ed to $36,611.30.

In the state­ment, the Fraud Squad re­it­er­at­ed that al­ter­ing in­for­ma­tion to gain fi­nan­cial or oth­er ben­e­fits is a se­ri­ous crim­i­nal of­fence. Such ac­tions can re­sult in crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty and pros­e­cu­tion.