Photo: Jemine Patrice Thurton, arraigned
BELIZE CITY, Mon. May 13, 2024
A woman who ordered and received from Celebrity Restaurant thousands of dollars’ worth of food and drinks, including cocktails and beers, but did not pay for the items, appeared in court this morning to be charged for scamming the well-known restaurant and bar, and is currently out on bail.
Jemine Patrice Thurton, 25, a resident of #7659 Price Street, in the Fabers Road area, was unrepresented when she appeared before a Senior Magistrate in Court #3, where she was read two counts of obtaining property by deception.
Allegations are that between March 24, 2024 and May 1, 2024, by deception she obtained the services of Taylor Fuller of Celebrity Restaurant and Bar in the sum of $100.
For the second count of obtaining property by deception, she is alleged to have obtained by deception food and drink items totaling $3,128.00 in value, including Shrimp.Alfredo, beef quesadillas, wings, and cocktails such as margaritas, cranberry vodka, Baileys Colada, and other drinks such as tequila shots and beer.
In court, Thurton pleaded not guilty to both charges; and since there was no objection to bail by the prosecutor, the Senior Magistrate of Court #3 offered her bail in the sum of $5,000 plus one surety of the same amount, which she met.
Conditions for Thurton’s bail are that, she is not to contact the virtual complainant or any prosecution witnesses, whether directly or indirectly or through any social media platform; she is not to send any text messages or post anything on any social media platform or try to speak to any of the witnesses through any social media platform or her bail could be revoked.
The next court date for Thurton is set for July 11, 2024.
According to a police report, on Sunday May 11, 2024 at about 5:01 p.m., Taylor Fuller, the administrator of Celebrity Restaurant, located on Marine Parade Boulevard, in Belize City, visited the Police Department’s Northside CIB office and reported that on Wednesday, May 1, 2024 at about 2:30 p.m., he received two online payments from a female known to him as Jemine Thurton of # 7659 Prince Street, Fabers Road, Belize City, who had been a regular customer to whose residence they had delivered food on a number of occasions and who had also gone to the restaurant personally numerous times to pick up food and drinks that she ordered. He said that he took a look at the dates of the bank transfers from Thurton’s purported account for the online payments and saw that one was dated May 15, 2024 at 2:23 p.m., and the other was dated May 17, 2024 at 2:05 p.m.
According to Fuller, this made him suspicious, because when it comes to online banking, the system doesn’t make mistakes with date and time as it is automated and records the exact date and time of a transaction/transfer.
As a result of that, Fuller then visited Belize Bank to make checks and to verify if those transactions dated May 15 and May 17 were legitimate, and upon the bank making checks they verified that those transactions were not legitimate.
According to Fuller, he then reviewed the online transfers that were purportedly made by Jemine Thurton and got a print-out from Belize Bank and saw that all the transactions made by Jemine Thurton from her purported bank account to Celebrity Restaurant’s Belize Bank account were not legitimate.
Fuller then went back to work and reviewed the entire bill for Jemine Thurton for items that was received by her either by delivery or pickup by her personally and he saw that between March 24, 2024 and May 1, 2024, Jemine Thurton ordered a long list of food and drink items that had a total value of $3,228.00 BZ.