Magistrate Ngaio Emanuel-Edwards will decide today whether or not to turn down Janice Samuel’s application for bail or uphold the prosecution’s objection to the request made when the accused appeared in court yesterday, charged with 14 counts of obtaining money by false pretense.
When she adjourned the matter pending her ruling, the magistrate also ordered that Samuel be remanded to Langford’s Police Station in the interim.
The 45-year-old woman allegedly obtained over $100,000 from her boss’s company, H2One, between March and July this year. The discovery was made early in July, a week after she pleaded guilty in a similar matter for embezzling her former boss of approximately $5,000 in February 2016.
When attorney Ralph Francis – who represented the Montserratian-born Samuel – applied for bail, he told the court his client is not a flight risk and her British passport is in the possession of another court.
He also said she is a mother of four and has been in Antigua for the past four years.
The prosecution raised the issue of the seriousness of the allegations and the fact that just a week ago Samuel was given a two-year suspended sentence for embezzlement, and if during those two years she again finds herself in trouble with the law she would have to serve two years in jail. Another part of the sentence in that case before Justice Iain Morley was that Samuel had to pay back the money she stole from her former boss with whom she had only worked two weeks as an administrative assistant.
Having heard all that, Magistrate Emanuel-Edwards said she needed verification that the passport was in the court’s possession and she also wanted time to also review all the facts for and against the bail application.
Samuel’s latest boss has accused her of preparing at least a dozen cheques between March 15th and July 7th, which she allegedly issued to a male friend who cashed them at a service station.
The friend, who did not provide any services to H2One, told police during a recent interview that he was not aware that any crime was being committed.
He has not been charged in the matter and the investigation continues.