GREEN

WESTERN BUREAU:

While the police continue in their relentless fight to cripple the lottery scam, they want the laws governing fraud crimes to be amended to give longer prison terms to convicts.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Les Green, in charge of the Serious and Organised Crime Branch, like many of his colleagues, is not happy with the current legislative measures on the books to punish perpetrators.

"The trouble with fraud is that it is not seen as a crime that merits long custodial sentences. Often, the sentences are quite low and the result is that the offenders get out of prison and can reoffend quickly," Green told The Gleaner.

"We need the public's support and equally the judiciary to ensure they understand the seriousness and the significant impact fraud has on people's lives, particularly in and around St James."

Last year, more than 200 murders were recorded in St James - the first time the parish's murder figure reached that mark. Many of the murders were linked to the lottery scam.

"We know a lot of the murders are linked to the scam, and some of the murders committed in the last 18 months are clearly linked," Green confirmed.

Several of the murders were committed in Granville - the community where the scam began several years ago.

Green is a career officer, spending most of the last 33 years as a detective working in the United Kingdom and other countries. While the lottery scam has grown significantly here, he said Jamaica was not the first country in which he has seen a lottery scam play out so prominently.

"Lottery scam, Internet and telephone crimes are worldwide," he said. "Many investigators say the roots of the crimes started in Nigeria. Nigerians' code of criminality is known, in some respects, to certain types of fraudulent crimes and a larger amount of sophistication has come from Nigerian criminals in this type of crime. This technique and knowledge have been spread across the world."

List recovered

He confirmed that some of the lists recovered in Jamaica have been used in other countries before reaching the island.

Green said there is a network, supported through the Internet, where the criminals have their own web pages and blogs through which they share and sell information. It is an arduous task, he said, to permanently cripple the scam, as it is easy for the criminals to register new websites and upload new pages almost immediately after they are disrupted.

"I don't think the problem will ever be totally solved. We will have to have effective policing and ensure that the local police are supported with the resources so that they can continue the activity in making swift arrests and prosecutions," Green said. "It will then be a matter of our criminal justice system to process those cases as quickly as possible and to ensure adequate sentences are levied."

The senior cop pointed out that, though several arrests were made two years ago, it took investigators just as much time to gather data from overseas for processing.

"It is a very laborious and time-consuming process."

With plans to implement a specialised unit in the island, he said he was hoping that cases would be tried at a faster pace and attract adequate sentences.

Sentencing for fraud can attract up to 10 years, but this is rarely handed down. In most cases, offenders are given non-custodial sentences of between two and three years.

noel.thompson@gleanerjm.com