AN accounting clerk who allegedly defrauded Maritime General Insurance Limited of more than $7 million, and is alleged to have used some of the ill-gotten gains to stage a posh wedding that made the society pages, is to return to court on November 10.

Police nabbed Ricardo Bell, 25, at the Canadian Embassy last Tuesday when he went there to apply for a visa.

“We held him trying to get a visa at the Canadian Embassy. He knew that we were on to him,” an investigator told the Observer.

“He threw a big, expensive wedding and buy bashy car. He enjoyed the money,” added the cop, who did not wish to be named.

The police say Bell committed 18 fraudulent offences while he was employed as an accounting clerk to the insurance firm between January 2002 and June this year.

During an audit earlier this year, it was discovered that expenditure receipts had been and that falsified. Bell allegedly stole more that $500,000 in one month.

“He took over $200,000 sometimes in one day. He was living big,” the investigator said.

On Thursday, Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey offered him bail in the sum of $1 million when he appeared before her in Half-Way-Tree court.

Jacqueline Samuels-Brown, who was handling the case for attorney Bert Samuels who was engaged in another matter at the Supreme Court, told the magistrate that her client lived with his mother, had no children and had never been previously convicted.

The judge then ruled that Bell hand over his travel documents to the police and report to the Portmore police station every Monday and Friday.

Bell was also ordered fingerprinted by the court.