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Multi-million dollar gold heist… Taxi driver pleads guilty, to be sentenced next month
Kaieteur News – Taxi driver Dequan King called ‘Titus’ or ‘Quanie’ on Monday pleaded guilty to being part of the 2021 multi-million dollar gold heist at Wallison Enterprise on Gordon Street, Kitty, Georgetown.
Dequan King called ‘Titus’ or ‘Quanie’
Police had issued a wanted bulletin in August 2021 for King and two others in relation to the robbery. However, it was only recently he was nabbed in Suriname and was deported to Guyana. The Defendant appeared before Principal Magistrate Sherdel Isaacs-Marcus at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Courts.
He pleaded guilty to the charge which states that on August 5, 2021, while, being armed with guns and in the company of others, he robbed Wallison Enterprise of $38 million in local currency and $20 million worth of raw gold, the property of Francis Santos Lumes.
King also admitted to three other charges that state that on the same date and at the same location he robbed Fernanda Carmichael of a cell phone value $350,000, Francis Santos Lumes of gold jewellery and cash amounting to $224,000 and William Batista DaSilva of a cell phone value $60,000.
King told the court that he was the driver who transported the gunmen to and from Wallison Enterprise. Principal Magistrate Isaacs-Marcus remanded King to prison and deferred sentencing to November 21, 2022. Last year, former Guyana Defence Force (GDF) rank, Keyon King, 32, of Vergenoegen, East Bank Essequibo and two of the company’s former security guards, Peon Lee called ‘Nino Brown’, 35, of Mocha, East Bank Demerara, and Delroy Jackson 37, of Golden Grove, East Coast Demerara were charged for the crime.
The GDF rank had admitted to the charge and he was sentenced to three years imprisonment, while the two security guards had denied the offence and were remanded to prison.
However, in January 2022, Lee moved to the High Court and was able to secure $450,000 bail.
Kaieteur News had reported that Lee was employed as a Chief Security Officer by the same company that was robbed of the $20M worth of raw gold and $38M in cash. Investigators have accused Lee of being the mastermind behind the robbery because his phone number showed up in the call logs of the GDF rank and the other security guard. The defendant has since denied this and claimed that he had no knowledge of the robbery. Lee alleged he was on his way to Bartica for work duties when the heist was ongoing.
According to reports, three gunmen posing as customers had entered the business establishment on the morning of Thursday August 5, 2021. They reportedly held the employees there at gun point, forced them to open a safe and then handcuffed them with plastic zip ties. They carted off with the gold, cash, along with jewellery and phones from their victims.
Detectives were able to crack the case by tracing one of the stolen phones to a house in Sophia. Lee and Jackson were later arrested and their investigation then led them to recovering $18M of the stolen cash in the back yard of the GDF rank, Keyon King. The detectives had also managed to recover a car used in the heist.
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