By FARRAH JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Reporter
fjohnson@tribunemedia.net
AN elderly woman has accused one of her tenants of illegally obtaining her cheque book and writing several cheques in her own name over a three-month period.
Selena Foulkes is currently on trial before Senior Magistrate Carolyn Vogt Evans for the alleged offence.
Margaret Rita Hall, 84, who is the complainant in the matter, told police that “somebody found her cheque book and started writing cheques in several amounts” even though she did not sign any of the bank notes.
When she took the stand yesterday, she said she had a checking and savings account with FirstCaribbean International Bank. She said her daughter, Jaqueline Hall, was her only co-signature and added that her cheque. book went missing from her daughter’s car sometime last year.
The court was told that although the cheque book was never located, there was a $900 cheque written out to Foulkes on July 23, 2020, a $1,500 cheque written out to the accused on July 27 and a $900 cheque made out to Foulkes on August 4.
Three more cheques in the amounts of $800, $1,500 and $350 were written out to Foulkes between August and September of last year, the court was told.
When the prosecution asked Mrs Hall if she was the one who wrote the cheques out to the accused “at any time”, she denied doing so. She also said she never gave Foulkes permission to cash any of the cheques.
When Jacqueline Hall testified, she said she and her mother knew Foulkes because the accused had been renting their efficiency for six or seven years. Ms Hall said she was the only one who assisted her mother with her banking transactions because no one else in their home had a car.
“Once she wrote cheques they would come to me first thing in the morning,” Ms Hall explained. “I never received any cheques from my mom in the name of Selena Foulkes.”
She said the cheque book “went missing” from her car sometime in September. She added that she was made aware that someone had been making transactions without her knowledge after she went to the bank to cash a cheque for her mother and was informed that no funds were on her account.
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