Published 3 December 2019
Buckie Got It. St. Kitts and Nevis News Source
POLICE AND IMMIGRATION OFFICERS TRAINED IN FRAUD DETECTION AND PREVENTION
Basseterre, St. Kitts, December 02, 2019 (RSCNPF): Some thirty (30) persons from The Royal St. Christopher and Nevis Police Force and the Immigration Department have been trained to better identify fraudulent documents and human trafficking.
The Officers were part of a two-day training course on the Prevention and Detection of Fraud which was held at the Police Training School on November 26 and 27. It was organized by the Embassy of the United States of America’s Regional Security Office (RSO). Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) Special Agent Ashley Wright, Criminal Fraud Investigator, Rodney Holder and Investigative Assistant, Richard Smith facilitated the training.
Special Agent Wright said that the DSS worked along with immigration officials, the police and other travel industry authorities to help them identify patterns in fraud.
“Over the past two days what we taught was the basics of human trafficking – how to identify it, how to respond to it as a first point of contact,” she explained. “Since travel documents have become more secure, the likelihood of somebody altering or creating a fake document is lowered. So, it’s more likely that people would just pretend to just be somebody else using a valid document. We wanted to teach our law enforcement colleagues how to spot somebody that’s pretending to be somebody that they aren’t,” she continued.
Wright also noted that there have been a few notable cases over the past few years in which DSS has worked with authorities in various countries of the Eastern Caribbean on impersonators and fraudulent documents. This year, prevention and detection of fraud training was also conducted in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, St. Lucia and Barbados.
“Hands on training like this – distinguishing fraudulent documents from real ones, identifying imposters – not only makes our countries more secure, but in the end can save the lives of individuals who really need help,” Wright said.
