7 News Belize

Justin West Wanted For Radisson Embezzlement
posted (December 4, 2013)

Police have released the name and photo of the former accounts payables clerk at the Radisson.  He is Justin West, a 26 year old resident of Rivero Street in Belize City and Lord's Bank. But now, police say he is on the run in the USA, and the wanted poster quotes a US address, as Los Angeles, California, West Adams area, at the corners of Jefferson and Western.  Now that's in South Central LA and is in the middle of the area where many Belizeans live, but that address will only take you here, at an intersection – so police probably aren't going to find him there.

But, they're determined to smoke him out, by putting out this wanted poster, which serves kind of like an international all-points bulletin.  It says that he is wanted in connection with the theft of 186 thousand dollars from the Radisson Fort George between August 2102 and September 2013.

As we reported, West, who has a sixth form education, used his accounting skills to trick the system at Radisson.  As an accounts payable clerk, he would generate false invoices from known suppliers, and get the higher up's to make out cheques to pay off the invoices. 

Then he would collect the checks and make his friends go cash them at the bank – where he also had a teller working in the scam. 

Those friends like Justin Lacroix – seen here posing with West would allegedly get a commission for cashing the cheques, as many as 60 of them in 13 months. That's slightly more than one per week.  Lacroix is facing 84 forgery related counts and his other friend, Brian Myvette is facing 24 counts.  He is a lab monitor at the University of Belize, and may have also put his wife in hot water, because he allegedly put the money under question in their joint account. 

Overall, it's a quite remarkable crime because it involves educated young, working men, with office type jobs, who allegedly used their knowledge to pull off a major white collar crime.

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