Derek Achong

Two women have been freed of fraud charges al­leg­ing that they used forged job let­ters in a bid to ob­tain Unit­ed States (US) visas.

Or­nel­la Hold­er, of Bel­mont, and Keisha Fer­nan­dez, of San­gre Grande, were freed of the charges dur­ing a hear­ing be­fore High Court Mas­ter Whit­ney Franklyn yes­ter­day.

Mas­ter Franklyn’s de­ci­sion in the case was based on the fail­ure of pros­e­cu­tors to com­ply with a sched­ul­ing or­der re­lat­ed to the fil­ing of ev­i­dence against the duo.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that pros­e­cu­tors had pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten to the court ex­plain­ing that they were hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in ob­tain­ing the ev­i­dence they were seek­ing to re­ly on.

Hold­er and Fer­nan­dez were ar­rest­ed and charged in Ju­ly, last year.

De­tec­tives of the Fraud Squad re­port­ed­ly be­gan in­ves­ti­gat­ing them when US Em­bassy of­fi­cials made a re­port af­ter job let­ters sub­mit­ted by the duo, ear­li­er last year, were found to be fraud­u­lent.

They were even­tu­al­ly charged for pos­ses­sion of and ut­ter­ing a forged doc­u­ment.

A man and a woman were sep­a­rate­ly charged with sim­i­lar of­fences around the time of the duo but Guardian Me­dia was un­able to get an up­date on their cas­es.

Hold­er was rep­re­sent­ed by Lemuel Mur­phy, while Ar­den Williams rep­re­sent­ed Fer­nan­dez.