A foreigner's wife is now facing a criminal complaint for estafa after an 80-year old woman charged her of deceit in a land transaction involving a real estate mortgage. Eufronia Estaca Guitan of Booy district, this city, accused Gertrudes Simonette, also of this city, of estafa after a bungled land transaction where a land owned by the complainant was used as a collateral in a loan approved by the Cooperative Rural Bank. In a three-page resolution, City Prosecutor Nefertiri Cristobal recommended the indictment of Simonette after she was found to have employed deceit in the mortgage of a lot owned by the complainant. The loan contracted was for P1 million after the respondent was supposedly issued a Special Power of Attorney by the complainant. However, subsequent findings showed that the complainant did not receive any single centavo out of the proceeds of the loan.

The septuagenarian also alleged that through deceit/fraud/misrepresentation/guile/treachery she was made to sign a Special Power of Attorney authorizing respondent as her attorney-in-fact to use as a collateral for loan and or mortgage of a parcel of land she owned in Booy. In her defense, the respondent averred that on July 21, 2006 , the complainant mortgaged the subject property to her in the amount of P250,000, payable within a period of 24 months after execution as stated in the Real Estate Mortgage notarized by lawyer Cirilo Viodor. Sometime in July 2007, complainant allegedly expressed her inability to pay the obligation prompting her to sell the subject land to the respondent in the amount of P1,037,250.00. Part of the supposed agreement to sell the land was for the complainant to name, constitute and appoint respondent as her attorney-in-fact in securing a loan with any banking institution utilizing the subject land as collateral. In finding probable cause for estafa, complainant alleged that in all the supposed documents, she could not remember having signed them or if her signature existed thereon, the same must have certainly been procured through fraud, trickery, deceit and or the real import, meaning or contents thereof, never explained to her.