CLARENDON, Jamaica – The Clarendon police are advising Leroy Sylvester Dennis, a 60-year-old St Catherine man wanted for “larceny by trick” in the parish, to turn himself in at the nearest police station.

Dennis, who the cops said is from a Central Village address in St Catherine but frequents a number of other parishes, is believed to be one of the people behind a “new form of scam which targets mainly senior citizens in the parish.” 

“He is of dark complexion, stout and about six feet tall. He sports a low hair cut and the left side of his face is lean, resulting from a stroke he had,” the police disclosed during a press briefing at the May Pen Police Station Tuesday.

“At the moment, he is the main suspect in a new type of scamming that we have seen in the parish,” said Detective Sergeant Balvey Thomas, a member of the parish Proactive Investigative Unit.

“…They will go around, identify persons coming from the bank and tell them that they have a large sum of cash that they want to put in the bank but they cannot do it, so they ask you to put it into your account for them.

“What they do is ask you to withdraw some money to prove that you have an account. When you withdraw the cash, they then take it and put it with theirs for you to lodge it as one. But instead of giving you back the money, they just run off with everything.”

Thomas said this type of trickery only surfaced at the start of the year, with at least three confirmed incidents so far. “Generally scamming is down in the division, but this is a new trend that we have seen,” he said.

Thomas added that while the process might seem to be “very simple and unbelievable”, it should not be taken lightly.

“It is happening,” he insisted. “They place the cash maybe a $1,000 note or so, over some cartridge paper that resembles money, fold it and put it in the bag. They then show it to you as if it is a large sum of money.”

“Persons have lost over $600,000 to the scam to date; $200,000 in one incident, so don’t take it lightly,” Thomas urged.  

Sergeant Thomas said not many victims are willing to report such incidents. 

“However, we are asking the public to come forward with any information they have because so far all of our complainants are pensioners,” he said. “These people will even tell you that they are your church brother from a long time and because they tell you about church you let immediately down your guard.”

– Oshane Tobias