Woman faces over 40 forgery charges
A former travel consultant appeared at the Nuku’alofa Supreme Court today charged with 46 counts of forgery and knowingly dealing with forged documents in relation to visa applications.
Sera Polata (40) who appeared before Mr Justice Cato at the start of a two-weeks trial was working as a travel consultant at the Friendly Island Travel in Tokomololo.
The Crown alleged from October 2013 to April 2014 the accused at numerous times forged documents by altering Westpac Bank of Tonga bank statements and reference letters of customers.
Customers provided her with their travel documents to lodge their visa applications on their behalf for a fee.
The Tonga Police alleged she had forged a number of reference letters and bank statements by scanning copies of reference letters provided by previous customers and copying it into new documents for other customers for their visa applications, without them knowing.
In early 2014 local private companies and government departments began to receive emails from the United States Embassy and Australian Immigration Department requesting verification of reference letters that displayed their letterheads submitted by the accused.
The reference letters were identified to have been forged and a complaint was made to police.
The Crown alleged the accused had altered these documents to pass them off as genuine documents.
Source: Matangi Tonga Online
