The Tribune

By NICO SCAVELLA

Tribune Staff Reporter

nscavella@tribunemedia.net

A female Baha Mar employee was ordered yesterday to pay back the $1,000 worth of goods and cash she swindled various Super Value supermarkets out of via fake Cable Bahamas cheques.

Senior Magistrate Derence Rolle-Davis ordered Dwaynisha Shepherd, 25, to compensate several Super Value locations the $1,134 she defrauded them out of earlier between May 1 and 7 of this year.

He also fined Shepherd, a housekeeper at the West Bay Street resort, $1,200 for having committing the six offences she was charged with. She is ordered to pay $2,334 in total.

Of that sum, $750 was to be paid yesterday, and to be applied to the fines. She faces six months in prison if she defaults.

Her sentence came after she admitted to defrauding Super Value’s Seagrapes Plaza, Winton Shopping Plaza, and another Super Value of $378 worth of goods and cash last month.

She also admitted to being found in possession of three Cable Bahamas cheques, worth $378 each, made payable to her.

According to a summary of the facts read by Inspector Lakesia Moss, the prosecutor, Kendrick Moss, an operations manager at Super Value, reported to police that sometime between May 1 and 7, three cheques were negotiated at various Super Value locations.

The cheques were all drawn on Cable Bahamas’ account, and worth $378 each, the prosecutor said. They were each dated May 1, 2019 and made payable to Dwaynisha Shepherd.

Insp Moss also said that a National Insurance Board number, ending with the digits 6925, was used as a form of identification during the cheque payments.

However, she said the cheques were returned because they were suspected of being fraudulent.

Pursuant to a complaint by Super Value, officers went to Cable Bahamas and spoke with the accounts manager, who gave them certain information and pointed out discrepancies in the cheques in question by comparing them to authentic Cable Bahamas cheques.

Officers subsequently went to the National Insurance Board (NIB) and inquired about the NIB number ending in 6925, and discovered that it was attached to Shepherd’s name.

In response to a question by the senior magistrate, Shepherd indicated that the cheques in question were given to her by Antonio Coleby, who was charged before Magistrate Samuel McKinney with six fraud-related offences.

He is alleged to have been caught in possession of a blank, magnetic striped card as well as a Gamer’s Reef magnetic striped card that both had Shepherd’s name embedded in their magnetic strips on May 27.

He is also accused of being caught in possession of a gold, Scotiabank Mastercard with the name Desmond Smith affixed; a Scotiabank Advantage Mastercard with the name Linwood Saunders affixed; a gold MasterCard with the name Dario Curry affixed; and a CIBC First Caribbean (FCIB) Visa card with the name of Desmond Smith affixed on May 27.

He denied the charges and returns to court on July 12 for trial.

Another man, Reynaldo Thompson, was charged before Magistrate McKinney with several fraud-related offences.

He is accused of being caught in possession of various blank, white, magnetic stripped cards issued by HSBC France; Ing-Diba bank in Germany; Wells Fargo Bank in the USA; and the National Westminster Bank PLC, in the United Kingdom, on May 27. He denied the charges and returns to court on July 2 for trial.