THE Court of Appeal has upheld a ruling that an attorney was negligent in handling a 2019 land sale that turned out to be a sophisticated fraud.

The case involved the sale of a property in Barataria, where a fraudster posing as the true owner, Robert John, sold the land to Keelan Aaron Hunte for $840,000. First Citizens Bank (FCB) provided a $650,000 loan to Hunte and held the property as security. Months later, the real Robert John discovered the fraudulent sale and challenged the transaction in court.

In 2023, Justice Frank Seepersad found attorney Richard Beckles, trading as The Legal Consultancy, and his junior attorney, Claire Pascall, failed to properly check the fraudster’s identity. They missed obvious red flags on the identification documents, including mismatched passport numbers, identical photographs on both ID and passport, spelling errors, and address discrepancies. The court ruled that even “an untrained eye” would have seen the inconsistencies.