Visitor fined $4K after refusing to pay bill at local hotel
A female visitor who refused to pay her near-$2,000 bill at a hotel on Anegada — claiming she was unhappy with her stay — has been fined.
Thirty-nine-year-old United States native, Katherine Jones, was fined after pleading guilty to two counts of obtaining services by deception. She answered to the charge when she appeared before Magistrate Ayanna Baptiste-DaBreo on Thursday.
Jones was fined a total of $4,000. Magistrate Baptiste-DaBreo ordered the visitor to pay the sum immediately or serve four months at Her Majesty’s Prison in Balsam Ghut.
Leading up to the sentence, her attorney Valerie Stephens-Gordon urged the court to temper justice with mercy, as her client had some ‘mental issues’. The attorney, therefore, urged the court to consider her client’s medical condition.
Stephens-Gordon argued that the mitigating factors outweighed the aggravating ones and implored the court to caution, reprimand and discharge her client as she had already served close to three weeks on remand.
What the court heard happened
The court heard that on January 14, Jones came to the territory without a fixed address and took a ferry to Anegada that same day. When she arrived on Anegada, she checked in to the hotel and presented her credit card to pay for her stay.
The court heard that she paid for expenses incurred from January 14 to 18. She then remained at the hotel until January 24 and racked up a food and drink bill of approximately $628. She incurred a further $1,128 for accommodation. The woman, however, refused to pay.
The hotel then sought police intervention but Jones still refused to settle her bill, the court heard.
She was eventually arrested. In a subsequent police interview, Jones reportedly said: “I wasn’t having a proper stay.”
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Cracked Corn
For a c***y person, she sure can eat lol
“The court heard that on January 14, Jones came to the territory without a fixed address and took a ferry to Anegada that same day.”
…..HOW?????
Why question her? They always assume their kind coming in is *cha ching*. Homeless? Not a problem, come right in! This c*****r was obviously short a few grains of salt…
Don’t you have the courage to type out your derogatory word in full?
????♂️ she didn’t enjoy the stay but waited until checkout to say something
why them could always get to use the mental card, but the book is still thrown at us when we do.
mental privilege up the wahoo….
So guys steals a scooter and gets a $1000 fine? Who’s privileged?
did he claim “mental issues”? im sure not he took his on the bases of what he did and not blame it on a loose screw that happened to know when to act up.
Sounds like a good deal – you don’t pay your bill, then you get free accommodation at Balsam Ghut!
how can you beat that: the view is breath taking plus meals
My mind wasn’t right either, but you have to pay your bill
This is the best piece of news I have read in a long time. Some of these people they come they stay they get treated to the best.
Yet they write bad reviews and some refuse to pay so for peace many hotels gave big discounts.
But kudos to the arresting officer and the hotel. This is a precedent we need officers like those working especially in the tourist districts in Tortola.
Some of them just dont have money to travel and come up with all type of tricks.
Umm Amerikkka or EUROPE can you please keep your crazy whites. We have our own crazy locals to deal with. Thanks in advance.
Please stop using race. White or any colour she is just n**s.
You are right we are one race…HUMAN. Different species of human. Statement should have stated “keep your crazy SPECIES” instead of whites.
White privilege in effect right there. A POC would never go to a foreign country without their accommodation booked for at least the first part of their trip, or check into a hotel and refuse to pay the bill. Mental issues? Oh please. As a whitey myself, honestly “these” people really deserve to spend some time at Her Majesty’s Pleasure AND pay a fine….
Idiot comment.
If it was a case of privilege, the Hotel would have let her go without paying the bill.
White privilege is not only racist. It’s a sick excuse for people who don’t want to accept their own ineptitude.
If privilege is spending three weeks on remand and paying a 4k fine then I personally would rather remain unprivileged.
Old Pirates yes They Rob I.
Lots of racist generalisations below the line today.
Thanks BVI News for not focussing on colour in the article itself.
if she was from a Caribbean island the response all over would have been ‘deport her’, ‘send her home’
but she white so the posters lenient. what a mentality the race card always play
“Island Man” are you dumb or just cant read she is a TOURIST of course she is going home, no need to say send her home.
The guys that were caught with the money were visitors too.
One of us do such stupid sh!+ like that in America, police probably would have shot us and claim they feared for their life.
Girl you know you don’t do that. You can’t do that. You stayed there, you still have to pay the bill. You order a meal,you eat the meal, then you complain about the meal was not good. You still have to pay for the meal.contrary to what you all think about America,everyone is not grimy like that. She deserved to be fined.
Anonymous………. defend your cuz. Cat got your tongue?
Island Man you could not have said it better.
When people come from ‘down island’ they have to ensure that they have an address and contact name but she just waltzed in at free will. If that’s not discrimination at its height I don’t know what else is. There are a lot of US kids working here illegally but because color and nationality no immigration officer ever raids. Sad !!
A lot? Really? I doubt it.
However, if you care to go to the US, Canada, UK, Europe and tally all the folk working there illegally and doing all kinds of illegal scams most will have brown/black skin. Hundreds of thousands of em.
And don’t forget BVI islanders have the right to go and live and work in the UK and anywhere in the EU but this is not reciprocated. Is this fair?
Stop the whining… people might hear and wake up and smell the coffee.
No fixed address?! Let one of our Caribbean brothers/sisters did tht
.they would have been on the next plane out of the territory. Fair, must be fair!!
Who robbing who?
$2000 for a week? That sounds like daylight robbery to me.
I can get two weeks all-inclusive in a 5 star resort the DR including flights for this. And the service would be friendly and top class!
Yeah this crazy women should have paid her bill but all this race talk is just too funny. Maybe the whites need to start filling the comments on all the news stories here about black people stealing… there’s at least one every day. It’ll be a full time job.
Instead forcing she to live in prison she should be shackled to a pole next to the raw sewage line flowing through our streets or forced to stay stay in a home next to the toxic fumes coming from our dump or forced to attend one our mold invested schools or even worse forced to try to access the internet with our slo and espensive provider.
Cmon people its about some i—t not paying her bill,not about racism!
It’s also about coming into the country with no fix address!!!
Thats my wife.she wack.