By Travis Chase | HGP Nightly News|
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — A grueling six-year financial investigation and subsequent legal battle culminated on Thursday when the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) secured major criminal convictions against the two masterminds behind one of the largest investment fraud schemes in Guyana’s history.
Magistrate Sunil Scarce found Yuri Garcia Dominguez and his wife, Ateeka Ishmael, guilty of operating an unregulated financial network that systematically defrauded thousands of Guyanese citizens of hundreds of millions of dollars. The illicit operation, which operated under the guise of Accelerated Capital Firm Inc. (ACFI), aggressively attracted more than 17,000 local investors by promising astronomical returns through a fabricated foreign-exchange investment program.
The corporate scam collapsed after investors dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars each into the fund, only to find their capital completely frozen, with the vast majority never recovering a single cent of their hard-earned money.
Handing down the penalties, Magistrate Scarce sentenced both Garcia and Ishmael to one year in prison, along with a mandatory fine of $ 1 million each, for operating an unlicensed financial institution.
Furthermore, Garcia was hit with an additional 18-month prison sentence and a $ 100,000 fine for illegally conducting a financial business without registering with the Guyana Securities Council (GSC), a direct violation of the Securities Industry Act. For her complicity in the same offense, Ishmael was fined an additional 100,000 dollars, with a default sentence of six months imprisonment should she fail to pay.
Case evidence presented by SOCU prosecutors showed that, while the duo made cosmetic attempts in late 2020 to register their operation with the GSC amid intense regulatory scrutiny, the process was abruptly abandoned. The registration permanently stalled after state regulators formally requested audited financial records, verified details of funding sources, and international compliance documents—none of which the fraudsters could provide.
Following the ruling, SOCU characterized the multi-year probe as a highly complex financial crime operation. Agency heads noted that the definitive convictions send an uncompromised warning to financial predators, marking a historic step forward in safeguarding Guyanese citizens from predatory, unregulated financial syndicates.
