Female confidence trickster exposed

Dec 01, 2008 News

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…preys on kindness of others

Tres Geness is currently counting her losses and praying to God that the police can apprehend a woman she says is calling herself Sharon Mohamed, who has been preying on the goodness of people and ripping them off of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to Geness, a taxi driver, who knew that she was the kind of person that would assist persons in need, brought the pregnant Mohamed with her young child called Jeremiah to her recently.

Mohamed related a sympathetic story of being in need since she was robbed of a quantity of gold.
Geness recalled that the middle aged, ‘decent looking’ woman told her that she had just come out of the hinterland and her husband had stabbed a guy whom he suspected had stolen some 24 ounces of gold from their dredge operations.

According to Mohamed, her husband was taken into police custody and was   charged for the offence.
She pleaded with Geness, a mother of four, for some money to post bail for her husband who was in the prison.

Mohamed assured Geness that she would be repaid, and showed them a taped envelope which she said had 17 ounces of gold. Geness even allowed the woman to move into her home, since she claimed she had nowhere to stay.

Geness said that she initially lent the woman $25,000 so that she could travel to the city and conduct the necessary transactions to collect some money.

The first stop was the Scotia Bank on Carmichael Street.
The woman went into the bank, but came out with another sad story.
Apparently the money had not been deposited in the bank as yet.

On the day the money was supposed to have been deposited, Geness said, the woman told her she was sick.
Geness said that she even observed the woman bleeding, and she took her to the hospital, where she was confirmed as being pregnant.

According to Geness, all this time Mohamed continued to borrow money with the promise of repaying it.
Mohamed took Geness’s family for a night out.

Now that Geness realizes that the woman was a trickster, it is clear why the woman was reluctant to have her photograph taken during the night out, and requested that it be deleted from the digital camera that Geness’s sister had used.

The sister recalled that Mohamed insisted that she did not look good in the photograph and she should delete it.

NO SALE
It was now time to sell the gold, and Geness accompanied Mohamed to the Gold Board.
Geness recalled that Mohamed was shown a sign board which spelt out the terms of sale, but noted that the confidence trickster declined to sell her ‘gold’ there, saying that she would have lost too much.

“I left and went to wait in the car, and she keep going in and coming out like if she doing business…She tell me she gon sell it pun de black market.”

Several prospective buyers were sought, but the price was never right, or Mohamed claimed that she had been previously ripped off by some of the prospective buyers.

THE PLOT THICKENS
Geness rents an East Bank Demerara apartment, and when Mohamed offered to have her take care of a huge building in Subryanville, the offer seemed tempting, according to Geness.

She said that, one night, Mohamed took them on a taxi ride through Subryanville and showed them a beautiful building. She told them she was the owner, but her uncle was living in the home.

Geness recalled that Mohamed told her that, when her father died, she inherited the home, and had placed her uncle in the house to live, but he had stolen a number of items from the house and sold it. Hence she would be putting him out.

The con artist told Geness that, given that she was so kind, she would need someone to take care of the house, and she was willing to have Geness take care of it.
The only catch was that she would have to take care of her (Mohamed) son.

During this time, monies were continuously being borrowed. “She keep showing we a yellow envelope well wrap up, and she say that as soon as she sell the gold she will repay her debt.”

EXPOSED
Geness got the shock of her life yesterday as she started packing to move into her new home, a reward for her kindness to this complete stranger and her young child, who was in desperate need of a friend and some financial assistance.

“I was at the back packing up our stuff to move into the house when she told us that she was just going to check and make sure that her uncle had already left,” Geness said.

The supposed husband had showed up the previous night and said that his mother had posted bail for him.
That was the last time that Geness laid eyes on the trickster.

The woman disappeared with the husband, child and all of her belongings that she had showed up with, “even she son’s bicycle.”

In a frantic search to find the woman, who by then had deprived her of some $300, 000 and her sister of another $30,000, Geness located the taxi driver who had introduced them.

The taxi driver took her to a house in Lusignan where he had also taken Mohamed previously, only to find out that the owner of the house had also been ripped off by the same duo.

The home owner told Geness that the woman had given him the same sad story, but recently he saw her husband in Georgetown and the two got into a fight.

The police intervened and he told them of the reason for the fight.
Mohamed’s husband was detained.

There was also another report from the village that Mohamed had conned another person using the same ploy, and this newspaper has learnt that the police are in receipt of several reports of a similar nature.
Even the taxi driver reported being conned.

He claimed that the woman had hired him and taken him to the house she claimed she owned in Subryanville, and left him outside with a promise to return with the taxi fare.

The driver told this newspaper that the woman told him that she was going to pick up her 4×4 which she said was at the mechanic. “I deh waiting deh all de time and she never come back,” the man lamented.

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