BY HORACE HINES

Observer West reporter

SAVANNA-LA-MAR, Westmoreland

MINISTER of Religion, Ray Foster who was arrested and charged with breaches of the Proceeds of Crime Act following an anti- lottery scam operation in Westmoreland on the weekend, is scheduled to appear in the Savanna-la-Mar Resident Magistrate’s Court next week to answer to the charges.

Foster, affectionately called ‘Pastor Ray,’ a resident of Little London in Westmoreland, is reportedly the head of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, located along Cooke Street, Savanna-la-Mar, in the parish.

Similar charges are also expected to be laid against a member of the same church and another person. They were both taken into custody during last weekend’s operation carried out by members of the Westmoreland police and the Proactive Investigative Unit, a police source told the Jamaica Observer West.

Reports are that during the operation, the police seized a motor car and lottery-scamming paraphernalia at a premises along Cooke Street in Savanna-la-Mar.

Subsequent investigations led to the arrest and charge of Foster at his church. He was subsequently granted bail.

The clergyman’s arrest come days after Minister of Security Peter Bunting called on churches in western Jamaica to assist in the fight against lotto scamming, which he described as one of “the most corrosive of activities”.

“This is not something we think the church has taken on frontally. One pastor told me recently that he preached against lottery scamming one Sunday and the following Sunday he lost half of his congregation,” Bunting disclosed during an address at the Western Jamaica Seventh-Day Adventist Leadership Conference in Mount Salem, Montego Bay.

He added: “If you are for Jesus, take a stand for Jesus, because you can’t be for Jesus and for scammers same time.”

When news broke of the arrests on the pastor and his church companion on the weekend, a large gathering of curious onlookers swarmed Great Georges Street, in the vicinity of the Savanna-la-Mar Police Station, where the pastor was held, causing vehicular traffic to come to a halt.