AN aspiring pilot, who took out a $3-million loan from a credit union using a dead man’s land title as security, was Tuesday sentenced to 18 months in prison when he appeared in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate’s Court.

Thirty-six-year-old Carey Lawrence of Portmore in St Catherine, secured the loan after he took an impostor, who was pretending to be the real land owner, to a lawyer’s office and caused the lawyer to prepare a letter stating that he (imposter) was giving Lawrence permission to use the land title as security.

Lawrence was sentenced to 18 months each on charges of conspiracy to defraud; forgery; uttering a forged document; obtaining money by means of a forged document and causing monies to be paid by means of a forged document, when he appeared in court for sentencing before Senior Resident Magistrate Judith Pusey. The sentences are to run concurrent.

Before Lawrence was sentenced, Attorney Ernest Smith begged the magistrate to be lenient and to give him a suspended sentence so that he could finish compensating the complainant.

“Based on two aspects of the social enquiry report, the accused demonstrate a degree of remorse that makes him a fit and proper candidate for the maximum of Your Honour’s leniency,” Smith said.

The lawyer then told the court that his client, who had paid back some of the money, wanted to remain in a position to make full restitution.

However, the magistrate, after going through the social enquiry report, observed that there was no community report to assist her in arriving at his sentence.

Lawrence then pointed out that he had not given the probation officer an address because he lived part-time at the homes of his two girlfriends in Portmore and Spanish Town, both in St Catherine.

Lawrence then told the court that he had started aviation school and wanted time to repay the credit union.

But the magistrate, noting that she was she was not impressed, said “No, no you’re not going to any flying school.”

She then sentenced Lawrence to 18 months in prison, after taking into consideration that he had pleaded guilty, had spent four months in custody and had started to repay the complainant.

The court heard that the convict went to a financial institution in Spanish Town, St Catherine, and applied for a loan of $3 million in 2013 while tendering a land title as security, along with a letter stating that the owner of the property gave him permission to use the title. The loan was eventually approved and disbursed to him.

However, it was later found out that the real owner of the land had died a decade earlier, and Lawrence was arrested and found with a driver’s licence bearing his photograph but with the name Adrian Marlon Reid and a birth date of July 7, 1989.

According to the police, when Reid, who turned out to be the grandson of the deceased man, was contacted he told them that Lawrence had approached him and had taken his identification card after offering him a job.

The police also reported that Reid had informed them that he had given the title to Lawrence for him to expedite the process to put on it, the names of the persons who were to get the land.