During her appearance in Kingston and St. Andrew Parish Court in Jamaica, a 23-year-old pleaded guilty to stealing more than $243,000.
Alisa Morris, a former pump attendant, pleaded guilty to unauthorised access and theft in connection with the withdrawal of $243,266.89 from a National Commercial Bank (NCB) debit card. The withdrawals took place between December 9, 2024, and December 11, 2024.
Court documents report that the complainant went to a Kingston gas station to buy fuel. He gave Morris his National Commercial Bank (NCB) debit card so that the transaction could be completed, but he mistakenly left without getting it back.
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When he tried to use his card for another purchase the next day, the complainant discovered it was missing. His bank then promptly started sending him transaction alerts. He retraced his steps and realized he had left the card with Morris.
According to The Jamaican Observer, Morris, who has been on bail, told the judge during her recent appearance on Tuesday that she had just recently found work at a fast-food restaurant and could only afford to pay back $50,000.
She agreed to pay back the remaining amount in three installments: $78,000 on July 15, 2025; $100,000 on June 27, 2025; and $50,000 on June 13, 2025.
As a condition of her bail extension, she was required to appear at the Kingston Central Police Station every Wednesday and Saturday between the hours of 6:00 am and 6:00 pm.
According to a report cited by The Jamaican Observer, statistics from the Bank of Jamaica (BOJ) show that overall fraud has increased significantly since COVID-19, with internet banking scams increasing by almost nine times since 2019. The BOJ detailed this trend in its Financial Stability Report 2024.
Debit and credit card fraud still accounts for 56 percent of all cases, but the BOJ cautions that financial institutions must now fight both traditional scams and get ready for a new era of cybercrime, as artificial intelligence (AI) is predicted to drive increasingly complex attacks on the country’s banking system.
“Fraudsters [are] starting to realise that it’s getting harder to do the cloning of the debit card, because of the chip and pin, so they have gone back old school [perpetrating more cheque fraud],” Jide Lewis, deputy governor of the Bank of Jamaica with responsibility for the financial institutions supervisory division, told the Jamaica Observer in an interview.
According to BOJ data, the banking industry reported a sharp rise in yearly fraud amounts for the period ending March 2023. The overall amount of fraud increased to $1.73 billion, which is almost twice as much as the pre-pandemic peak in 2019.
Internet banking fraud and credit and debit card fraud, in particular, are the main drivers of this increase. Together, they currently account for almost $7 out of every $10 in fraud losses in Jamaica’s banking industry.
