A Guyanese tutor who admitted to using a false identification card is still being denied bail after 28 days on remand.
Languages tutor Natasha Veronica LaFarque, of #120 5th Avenue Rendezvous Gardens, Christ Church, will have her bail plea addressed again when she returns to court next Friday.
The 41-year-old reappeared before Magistrate Douglas Frederick in the District ‘A’ Magistrates’ Court today. She is awaiting a presentencing report before being punished for using an identification card, bearing the name Melanie Taitt, in connection with criminal deception.
She presented the false ID card to a customer service representative at a bank last month.
“She is a schoolteacher . . . a person who, in an unguarded moment, made a mistake,” her attorney Samuel Legay said after prosecutor Acting Station Sergeant Neville Watson objected to bail.
Stressing that his client had been living in Barbados for more than a decade and owned property here, Legay said she was “a proper and fit person for bail” and even though he could not see any reason why she would not turn up for scheduled appearances, the court could impose certain reporting conditions on her.
He also made the point that since preparing presentencing reports was becoming a lengthy process, LaFarque could be allowed out on bail while awaiting hers.
At this point Magistrate Frederick interjected and explained that LaFarque had seemingly contributed to the delay in preparing the presentencing report since she had refused to give the probation officer any contact information for her relatives in Guyana.
He also explained that by remanding LaFarque he was not seeking to punish her but to help her, by getting to the bottom of things, since he could not understand how someone like her could end up in a situation like this.
Today, LaFarque insisted that she had cooperated with the probation officer but the official got no answer when she called to Guyana.
She promised to cooperate more fully between now and next week.
LaFarque went to a bank in March and presented a LIME bill in the name of Melanie Taitt. When the customer service representative noticed that the ID card she produced looked larger than normal, she asked LaFarque her name and was told it was Melanie Taitt.
The manager and police were summoned.
Officers from the Financial Crimes Unit found out LaFarque’s correct name and address and a number of aliases at her home.