Passport fraudsters collared

A Clarendon man who admitted to using a fake name to obtain a Jamaican passport was fined $100,000 when he appeared in the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court yesterday.

Damion Thomas, 37, pleaded guilty to making a false declaration and obtaining passport by forged documents.

Allegations are that on March 25, 2021, Thomas presented himself to the Passport, Immigration and Citizen Agency (PICA) in Kingston and applied for a passport in his correct name.

However, further investigations revealed that Thomas had applied for a passport in the name Kenton George Russell in 2015. Four years earlier, he was issued a passport in the name Damion Thomas.

Issued passports in other names

Meanwhile, a Kingston man is to know his fate on July 1, after he pleaded guilty to four counts each of making false declaration, obtaining passport by forged documents, and uttering false documents, yesterday.

The court heard that Andrew Winston McNeil applied for a passport in January using his correct name. However, checks done by the PICA officers revealed that he was twice issued passports in other names - Winston Headley Walker in 2004, and Everton Montgomery Gordon in 2006. Those passports had McNeil's image.

When asked if he had anything to say to the court, the accused man stated that his son is blind and he needed help for him so he used the passports to travel to the United States.

However, the chief parish judge, Chester Crooks, was not impressed.

"I'll give credit for early guilty plead and that's all the credit I can give you," said the judge after which he ordered the fingerprint of the accused to be taken.

"The fact that you did it recently, you haven't learnt your lesson," the judge added.

A social enquiry report has been ordered to help the judge determine the appropriate sentence for McNeil, who has been remanded in custody.

- A.D.