Ticketed at the pulpit

At 11:43 a.m. on October 15, 2023, Bishop Phillip Johnson was driving his car along the Old Harbour main road in St Catherine when he saw a friend and stopped to take a picture with his cell phone.

The chance encounter happened nearly 30 minutes after Johnson, who is also a justice of the peace, delivered a live-streamed sermon at his church, Fingers from the Heart Ministries, located in Spanish Town, also in St Catherine.

Unknown to him at the time, however, was that almost simultaneously and more than 50 miles away in St Mary, his name, unique taxpayer’s registration number (TRN), and motor vehicle information were presented to cops in a traffic stop.

At the end of the traffic stop, four tickets were issued to ‘Phillip Johnson’ for the offences of exceeding the speed limit, not wearing a seatbelt, failing to comply with traffic signs, and failing to obey the command of a constable.

The tickets, which carried fines totalling $23,000, showed that they were issued between 11:32 a.m. and 11:34 a.m. and indicated that the infractions were committed along the Tower Isle main road, Johnson disclosed during an interview with The Sunday Gleaner.

Information about his motor car was also captured on the tickets.

“The registration plate, the year of the vehicle, the make, model, colour, the expiry date for the licence – all of that is right in front of me on the ticket, as well as my TRN, my name, address, date of birth. All of that is correct,” he said during the interview last Friday.

a warrant for his arrest

Johnson was in the dark about the tickets until two weeks ago, when cops showed up at his home in Spanish Town, St Catherine, with a warrant for his arrest for failing to pay the fines or attend court.

“That was where the shocker came,” said the pastor, noting that he initially thought that it was some kind of prank until the cops showed him the warrant.

“At that time, I had no confirmation as to where I was then [on October 15 last year] because I hadn’t started that investigation yet.”

When the pastor began retracing his movements on that day, the first thing that caught his attention was that it was a Sunday.

“So I started looking at the church programme for that day, and when I found it, I saw myself as the speaker for the day. That made me a little bit excited because I see now that I can account for being at a particular place,” he said.

But the more compelling evidence came when he reviewed his church’s social media pages for October 15 last year, “and there I was, preaching just within the same time the ticket was issued in St Mary with my vehicle”.

That is when he also found the picture he took of his friend along the Old Harbour main road on his cell phone, time-stamped at 11:43 a.m.

The case against Johnson was “withdrawn by the prosecution” in the St Mary Parish Court last Tuesday, the Court Administration Division (CAD) confirmed on Friday.

An official at CAD confirmed that an order was made for Johnson’s arrest and that he appeared in court on a warrant but said the police “investigating officer noted that he didn’t recall the matter”.

But according to Johnson’s account, he was set free by the presiding judge after the policeman who wrote the tickets indicated in court that “he had no recollection of issuing a ticket to me that day”.

The stunned pastor pondered whether his experience was due either to an error with the TRN involved in the St Mary traffic stop or if his TRN had been duplicated.

“I am wondering if there could be someone else having my identity, but the tax office hasn’t picked it up because it was done in an unscrupulous way … like somebody else having my TRN out there with my name and address,” he suggested.

He acknowledged that Tax Administration Jamaica has since indicated that his TRN has not been compromised.

“I told them about the incident. They checked my TRN [on their database], and as far as they are seeing, there is only one person who has this TRN, and that’s me,” Johnson disclosed, noting that he was allowed to view the data.

sophisticated

cloning schemes

Johnson’s ordeal, however, mirrors the experience of motor-vehicle owners who have fallen victims to a number of sophisticated cloning schemes developed by multiple car-stealing rings that are raking in millions of dollars for underworld crime syndicates, a senior police investigator disclosed.

“It is a multimillion-dollar operation, and a lot of people are getting caught in the cross fire,” said the investigator, who did not want to be identified because he does not have authority to speak publicly.

He cited, as examples, three private citizens who rented their motor vehicles, which were later stolen and sold to unsuspecting purchasers.

“The person who bought the cars got ‘legitimate’ titles with them,” he told The Sunday Gleaner.

The police investigator explained that the spike in stolen motor vehicles across Jamaica in recent years and the need to quickly offload them has fuelled numerous creative and elaborate cloning schemes.

The police have not responded to questions submitted by The Sunday Gleaner on September 17 requesting data on the number of motor vehicles reported stolen up to that point this year and the comparative period last year.

However, available data for the St Andrew North Police show that 141 cars valued at $196.1 million were reported stolen across communities that fall within the division between January 1 and October 30 this year.

Nineteen of those vehicles, with a total value of $30 million, were recovered.

A breakdown of the data revealed that 95 per cent of motor-vehicle theft across the St Andrew North Police Division occurred on Saturdays and Sundays between midnight and 6 a.m. Some 62 per cent of all stolen vehicles were fitted with some form of anti-theft device.

Popular Toyota brands such as Marx X, Probox, Voxy, Axio, Wish, and Fielder are among those frequently targeted.

The police investigator said getting the cooperation of the tax authority is one of the major hurdles in apprehending employees who are colluding with criminals.

“The investigation is oftentimes frustrated because information is not flowing freely. So you might request information like who licensed a particular vehicle, but you don’t get it until six months down the road. By that time, the leads that you were following have gone cold, persons have migrated, and all kinds of things,” he explained.

“People pretend that they are cooperating, but they are not necessarily cooperating.”

[email protected]