What were filed for 28 counts for syndicated estafa against two top educators of a Dauis school was downgraded to the lesser offense of estafa thus allowing the respondents to post bail. Had Deputy City Prosecutor Romeo Chatto found probable cause against the couple Jose and Zenaida Caberte, principal and school administrator, respectively, of International Academe of Enciema in Totolan, Dauis, the higher crime of syndicated estafa would have been non-bailable. Only last week, the Post bannered an exclusive story about the fate of the Cabertes in the hands of seven doctors and two of their spouses and two nurses who charged the two for 28 counts of syndicated estafa.
In a resolution furnished the Post yesterday, Chatto only found five counts of estafa in violation of Article 315, 2 (a) of the Revised Penal Code. One of those who filed the 28 counts was Dr. Imelda Jumangit, a noted pulmonologist of Ramiro Community Hospital. The 28 counts were reduced to a single offense considering that the defraudation consisted of a series of transactions committed within one continuous period. Dr. Jumangit was one of the six doctors (not seven as mistakenly reported last week) of the Ramiro Community Hospital who filed the syndicated estafa against the Caberte couple arising from a bungled investment proposal. The other complainants were Drs. Corazon Entero-Lim, Ruther Ramiro, Jane Ramiro, Isagani Jodl de los Santos, Jr. and Lynette Rodriguez. The husband of Rodriguez, Hector, was also listed as a complainant. Two nurses, Cleofe Jumangit and Milagros Malanog, whose husband is a seaman, were also named as complainants.
According to the complaint, sometime in September 2009, Drs. Entero- Lim and Jumangit were asked by the Caberte couple to invest and become incorporators of a school corporation which the latter have wanted to organize. The same case records indicated that having known the respondents for several years as trustworthy and highly respectable persons in the academic community, the same complainants readily reposed their trust in the two and agreed to invest and be part-owners of the school. But in a letter to the complainants, the Caberte couple averted that much to their desire to accommodate them as part-owners it cannot be possible because its Securities and Exchange Commission application was for a non-stock, non-profit institution. The couple instead proposed to treat the investment of the complainants as loan payable within a given period with interest according to prevailing bank rates. This triggered the misunderstanding between the couple and the complainants giving rise to the case of syndicated estafa.
In an inventory of the invested amount as enumerated in the resolution, it was gathered that the complainants were duped into spending their hard earned money in cash and through construction materials and school supplies amounting to P500,249.45, P500,000 and P878,400.00, respectively. The complainants also included other respondents who are close family relatives of the Caberte spouses as incorporators of the corporation per SEC records but were dropped after the inquest prosecutor found them not liable considering that the evidence presented showed that they did not participate or have no active role in the deceit and misrepresentation committed by the husband and wife.
In settling the issue at hand, Prosecutor Chatto noted that complainants in delivering their money in the form of cash and or materials to the respondent-spouses, relied in the deceit and false pretenses employed by the two. By means of deceit, said respondents falsely pretended that complainants would be admitted as members of the corporation and become part owners of the school and by such representation were able to inveigle complainants and obtained considerable amount of money and materials from them. The prosecutor continued: the claim of respondents that they could not recall having agreed that complainant Entero-Lim would become part owner does not inspire belief. He said a person with the caliber and intelligence of complainant Entero-Lim and for that matter all the complainants who are in the medical profession, would not part their hard earned money without the assurance that they can get something in return adding that there must be compelling reasons that convinced them to deliver the money and materials to respondent spouses.
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