A parking ticket payment scandal emerged today as Corporation of Hamilton’s (CoH) Data Input Specialist assigned to Police prosecutions was charged in Magistrates Court, along with CoH Human Resource Director and another female for a slew of alleged dishonesty offences.
Paula Thomas, the input specialist, HR director Lindell Foster and Cassandra Trott, an alleged beneficiary of the plot were all charged and will appear in the Magistrates Court for trial at a later date all three women enter not guilty pleas.
The charges are relative to false accounting and stem from an alleged scheme of cancelling parking tickets that had been served to motorists by parking enforcement officers, thus denying the Corporation of Hamilton revenues.
Of the trio Thomas was ladened with the most charges, with six offences.
Thomas was imbedded into Bermuda Police Service (BPS) prosecutions department for the specialist role of inputting tickets into a JEMS data bank where the parking ticket charges are merged with the court system from which summonses could be drawn and delivered when payment was not forthcoming from offenders or offences were to be disputed.
Foster, with two charges, is alleged to have encouraged Thomas to falsify records by ‘pulling tickets’ from the stacks she received and not inputting them into the system.
Trott was also burdened with two charges of the bribery, whereby she was alleged to have offered favours to Thomas in the form of a ‘few drinks’ as compensation for not inputting specific parking tickets.
Thomas and Trott were charged together for with intent to cause loss to the CoH by concealing a record or document required for accounting purpose by not inputting a parking ticket on or about July 9, 2019.
Thomas is solely charged with acting with a view to gain for another, namely Aneika Francis, by falsifying a record intended for accountuing purpose by recordingthe disposition of a parking ticket.
Trott is charged with two actions contrary to the Bribery Act 2016, while Thomas, the alleged benificiary of bribes has three further charges relative to actions contrary to the Act, along with a further charge of obstruction of justice.
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