Tonight,
55 year-old Teena Isaac, a citizen of the East African country of
Tanzania, is at the Belize Central Prison after she stole the identity
of a Belizean woman and used it to try to apply for a Belizean passport.
The passport document would have been the last document she needed to get to fully assume the identity of Carmen Cantun. She already had a birth certificate from the Vital Statistics Unit, complete with all the information belonging to Carmen Cantun. It says that she was born in San Narciso Village in the Corozal District in July of 1966 and that she is supposedly the daughter of Cebastiana Cantun, who resides in San Narciso Village. This birth certificate indicates that it was issued on December 30, 2013.
The passport document would have been the last document she needed to get to fully assume the identity of Carmen Cantun. She already had a birth certificate from the Vital Statistics Unit, complete with all the information belonging to Carmen Cantun. It says that she was born in San Narciso Village in the Corozal District in July of 1966 and that she is supposedly the daughter of Cebastiana Cantun, who resides in San Narciso Village. This birth certificate indicates that it was issued on December 30, 2013.
She
also has a social security card which looks authentic, with her picture
in the location instead of the real Carmen Cantun. The work of the
forgery is impressive; you wouldn’t be able to tell that it’s fake
document if a public official didn’t tell you that it was. The social
security card was issued 2 Fridays ago on January 3, 2014, and it
expires on January 2, 2024.
So,
when she went into the Belize City Passport office at the Charles
Bartlett Hyde Building yesterday, everything seemed to be in order. She
filled out all the application forms, and she produced the 2
prerequisite recommendations from the guarantors, under the new passport
regulations. She paid the application fees, and her processing almost
went through flawlessly, but the immigration officer got concerned when
she was speaking to this woman claiming to be Carmen Cantun. She was
being unusually quiet, and when she was asked certain questions, she
didn’t respond.
The
problem is that she didn’t understand the language that the officer was
speaking in. Because the officer looked at her credentials and saw that
she was supposedly from San Narciso, Corozal, she made an educated
guess and addressed her in Spanish the entire time. She was simply
exchanging pleasantries with the woman to get her to relax during the
routine interview process. Because Isaac, pretending to be Carmen
Cantun, didn’t answer, the immigration officer asked her to step into
another room, and that’s when the officers started to press her for
answers.
Under questioning, Isaac revealed that she understood English perfectly, but the officers picked up her heavy African accent. She also revealed that she was a Tanzanian national, that she had been in Belize illegally for over a year and a half, since July 22, 2012, and that she violated the visitor’s permit, which granted her a month’s stay in the country.
Under questioning, Isaac revealed that she understood English perfectly, but the officers picked up her heavy African accent. She also revealed that she was a Tanzanian national, that she had been in Belize illegally for over a year and a half, since July 22, 2012, and that she violated the visitor’s permit, which granted her a month’s stay in the country.
The
officers continued to press her, and they eventually got a hold of her
battered Tanzanian passport, which revealed her identity as Teena Iron
Isaac, and that’s when the officers charged her with 4 different
immigration offenses. She was charged with one count of using a document
she wasn’t entitled to use for the social security card, another count
for the birth certificate, a third count of falsifying an official
document for the forgeries she made to the passport form, and failing to
comply with a visitor’s permit.
She
was arraigned before Magistrate Dale Cayetano this afternoon, where she
pleaded guilty to all the charges. She broke down asking for leniency,
admitting to all the forgeries she had perpetuated.
Magistrate
Dale Cayetano sentenced her to pay fines to a total of $4,000
forthwith, which she wasn’t able to pay. She will now have the serve the
default sentence of 1 year in prison. It is expected that the
Immigration Department will apply for a removal order, and she will be
deported back to her home country as soon as she serves the time, or
pays the fine in the slight grace period most illegal immigrants are
given.
Immigration
authorities have just started to investigate the case, so they are not
sure if the real Carmen Cantun is still alive, or if she has passed
away. They do believe that for this level of forgery, Teena Isaac must
have had inside help from the Social Security Board and/or the Vital
Statistics Unit. The persons who signed for her as her guarantors are
also facing investigation. One of them forged on the passport
application form that he knew Isaac for 5 years, which is not possible
because, as we told you, she was only in the country for 1 and a half
years. Under new passport laws such offences carry stiff penalties.
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