The two brothers and their brother-in-law, who all confessed to an insurance fraud that netted $4 million in a scam which used made-up identities and those of real people were given suspended sentences when they reappeared in the No 5 Supreme Court yesterday.
Michael William Pooler, of St Philip; Ruel Carlos Antoine Ward, of St Michael, and Algernon Carl Ward, of Ellerton Gardens, St George, will have to avoid any brushes with the law for the next two years or their substantive sentences, which range from one year to three years in prison, will be activated.
The three were charged in the wake of investigations by Sagicor Ltd, after red flags were raised at the unusually high average cost per claim at Barbados Hardware Insurance Ltd.
Pooler and Ruel Ward had confessed to conspiring to defraud Barbados Hardware Insurance Ltd, a then subsidiary of Sagicor, of sums of money totalling $2 560 070 by way of a number of CIBC Caribbean cheques, between February 1, 1995 and May 31, 2004. One and half million dollars had been repaid.
Algernon Ward had pleaded guilty to stealing $4 623.05, the property of CIBC Caribbean. Â
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