By FARRAH JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
fjohnson@tribunemedia.net
A JAMAICAN man who paid another man $150 for a fake immigration stamp he tried to use to extend his stay in the country was yesterday sentenced to six months behind bars.
Orlando Brown, 28, was charged with overstaying and being in possession of a forged immigration landing stamp after he was found residing in New Providence past the time granted to him to remain in the country with a fraudulent stamp in his passport.
He pleaded guilty to the offences when he appeared before Senior Magistrate Carolyn Vogt-Evans.
The court heard on April 21, a team of immigration officers, attached to the residential spouse unit, went to Brown’s residence located off Shirley Street. The prosecution said when the officers entered the home to conduct their inspection, they found “all to be well”. However, when the immigration officer asked Brown to see his passport, he discovered an altered immigration stamp affixed to one of the booklet’s pages.
When he was questioned, the accused claimed he got the stamp from the airport. He was subsequently cautioned and transported to the Detention Centre for further processing. When he was interviewed there, he admitted the stamp did not come from an official at the airport and said he paid another Jamaican man $150 in March 2019 to get him the stamp.
The court heard Brown left the country since that time and returned in January 2020 when he was given permission to stay for one month.
During the hearing Brown, who said he was married to a Bahamian woman, declined to comment.
Magistrate Vogt-Evans accepted his guilty plea and sentenced him to six months in prison for possessing the fake immigration stamp. She also fined him $1,000 or three months in jail for overstaying.
In passing sentence, she said future offenders needed to know illegal immigration would not be tolerated especially in the midst of COVID-19 pandemic and the “continued burden of drugs and human trafficking”.
Both of Brown’s sentences are ordered to run concurrently.
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