A former travel consultant who changed her plea to guilty in relation to 39 charges of forgery and knowingly dealing with forged documents for visa applications was remanded in custody for sentencing on March 6.

Sera Polata (40) had initially pleaded not guilty to a total of 47 counts of forgery and knowingly dealing with forged documents at the start of her trial before Mr Justice Cato on January 26, at the Nuku’alofa Supreme Court.

However, after the Crown completed calling its witnesses in court, the accused changed her plea to guilty in relation to the 39 charges that included 29 forgeries and 10 for knowingly dealing with forged documents.

The Crown Prosecutor represented by the Solicitor General Sione Sisifa withdrew the remaining eight counts due to insufficient evidence.

The judge then ordered the accused to be remanded in police custody for sentencing on March 6.

The court heard from October 2013 to April 2014, the accused who was a travel consultant at the Friendly Island Travel in Tokomololo, had at numerous times forged documents by altering Westpac Bank of Tonga bank statements and reference letters of customers.

Customers provided her with their travel documents to lodge their visa applications on their behalf for a fee. She then had forged a number of reference letters and bank statements by scanning copies of reference letters provided by previous customers and copying it into new documents for other customers for their visa applications.

In early 2014 local private companies and government departments began to receive emails from the United States Embassy and Australian Immigration Department requesting verification of reference letters that displayed their letterheads submitted by the accused.

The reference letters were identified to have been forged and a complaint was made to Tonga Police.