Man slapped with $400K fine for passport fraud
Published:Friday | May 16, 2025 | 12:08 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Forty six-year-old Mario Brown, who admitted in court to applying for a passport under a false name in 2014, has been ordered to pay a $400,000 fine or spend 30 days in prison.
He appeared before Judge Natiesha Fairclough-Hylton in the St James Parish Court on Wednesday.
Brown admitted that in 2014, he visited the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency (PICA) and applied for a passport using the name Eric Anthony Brown. The passport was issued to him on November 21 of that year.
The court heard that the matter came to light earlier this year when Brown returned to PICA to apply for a passport under his real name.
During the application process, inconsistencies in the records raised suspicions, leading to the discovery of the previously issued passport obtained through false information. He was subsequently arrested and charged.
In court, Brown’s attorney, Michael Hemmings, requested a non-custodial sentence, arguing that his client had never used the fraudulent passport for travel. He explained that Brown had resorted to using a false identity due to fears that a prior drug conviction in Canada might prevent him from travelling under his real name.
“On my instructions, the accused man is indicating that he did apply for a passport in an incorrect name, and he has accepted full responsibility for that. He did that because he wanted to travel and did not wish to do so in his correct name as he has a previous conviction in a jurisdiction outside of Jamaica,” Hemmings told the court.
FIRST LEGAL INFRACTION
The court was informed that Brown had been convicted of a drug offence in Canada in 2009. Hemmings emphasised that this current charge was Brown’s first legal infraction since then.
Despite the plea for leniency, Judge Fairclough-Hylton criticised Brown for deliberately attempting to mislead the authorities, especially in light of his prior conviction.
In issuing the $400,000 fine to Brown, Judge Fairclough-Hylton scolded him for knowingly seeking to deceive the authorities after having already been convicted overseas.
“The issue is that you had a conviction for an offence in another jurisdiction, and because of that, you knowingly applied for a passport in the name of someone else. That shows a level of dishonesty,” said Fairclough-Hylton. “This is a situation where you were criminally convicted, and in order to go to a different country, you sought to deceive the authorities and obtain a passport in someone else’s name.”
Under Section 11 of the Passport Act and Section 6 of the Forgery Act, it is an offence for a person to try and obtain a passport through false representation. Anyone found guilty of this offence may be sentenced to a term of imprisonment not exceeding two years.