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‘Phony’ GPL workers nabbed after fleecing Land of Canaan residents

Aug 12, 2011 News

Luck ran out on two men who claimed they were employees of the Guyana Power and Light Inc., and fleeced several residents of varying amounts of cash.
The men were arrested on Wednesday afternoon by members of the Land of Canaan Community Policing Group after they were pointed out by one of their victims.
The men, who were equipped with GPL identification cards and the requisite tools, would demand money from their unsuspecting targets, after claiming that their meters were either defective or unlawfully obtained.
They would threaten to remove the meter and the electricity service if their demands were not met.
This scared many of the homeowners, mostly women, forcing them to part with their money.
This newspaper spoke to one of the victims, and he related that the men went to his home where they met his wife who was alone. He said that the men told his wife that their meter had a “discrepancy” and they would have to “take it out”.
They explained that the meter was registered to a man who resides in Robb Street and it should not have been at the Land of Canaan address. They then demanded the $5000. However, the woman offered to pay them $2,000 which the men bluntly refused. She subsequently made the payment, and when the men left, she contacted her husband who was in the city.
The man told this newspaper that he and his wife went to the GPL location on Sheriff Street where he related his plight.
But the GPL officials denied knowing the men, adding that they did not authorize any work of that nature in the Land of Canaan community. This was despite the resident telling them that the men were wearing the company’s identification badges.
The man said that as he was returning home with his wife, they spotted one of the men, and immediately solicited the assistance of a member of the community policing group to arrest him.
At first the suspect denied that he had collected money from anyone, but later changed his story in the presence of the police at the Timehri Station.
The suspect insisted that he was an employee of the GPL. He even offered to repay the money, but the police advised against such a move, insisting that the matter go before the court.

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