Cash Plus boss fraud trial postponed
Published:Wednesday | October 3, 2012 | 12:00 AM
ALTHOUGH THE prosecution was ready to proceed with the fraud trial of former Cash Plus boss Carlos Hill on Monday, the trial had to be put off to March 4 next year because his lawyers are engaged in other cases which began last week and are continuing this week.
Hill's case was first set for trial on March 12, and when it could not start on that day it was put on the priority list for Monday. The court was told then that the prosecutor who was assigned to the case had resigned and the other prosecutor who was assigned to take over the case was at circuit court in another parish.
The former Cash Plus boss is on bail in the sum of J$1.5 million. Supreme Court Judge Jennifer Straw extended his bail when he appeared in the Home Circuit Court.
Hill is charged with fraudulently inducing persons to invest in Cash Plus. The charge stemmed from the collapse of the five-year-old multibillion-dollar alternative investment scheme which crashed in 2008. Hill is accused of operating a Ponzi scheme - an offence which carries a maximum sentence of seven years' imprisonment. Attorneys-at-law Valerie Neita-Robertson and Deborah Martin are representing
Hill.
Hill also has a fraud case pending in the Corporate Area Resident Magistrate's Court. The charges relate to the collapse of Cash Plus. He is charged jointly with his brother Bertram Hill and Peter Wilson, the former chief financial officer of Cash Plus. They are facing charges of obtaining money by false pretence, conspi-racy to defraud and fraudulent
conversion.
The three were arrested and charged in April 2008 following the collapse of Cash Plus.