Friday, August 12, 2005
12 charged with P9.4M robbery
By Karlon N. Ram Sun.Star Staff Reporter
With Mia E. Abellana
A criminal complaint for robbery was filed yesterday against 12 persons who the police and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) believe were behind the P9.4-million heist at the Land Bank of the Philippines branch in Bogo, Cebu last week.
But of the 12 respondents, only two are under custody.
Authorities have the names of three more—Joel Somabong, the alleged gang leader, Dindo Ancero and a certain Ceferino Serbano—but Provincial PNP Director Drusillo Bolodo admits they don’t know where they are.
Authorities also have a physical description and an alias on a fourth person, known only as “Partner,” but they don’t have his whereabouts either.
“This case is deemed only partially solved. We will conduct a follow-up operation in order to have all of them in custody and charged before the court,” said NBI Director Medardo de Lemos in an impromptu joint press conference with Bolodo at the NBI Regional Office yesterday afternoon.
De Lemos and Bolodo presented the two suspects currently under NBI and PNP custody—Land Bank security guard Henry Cuerda and Joseph Ancajas.
Cuerda and Ancajas were brought to the Office of the Cebu Provincial Prosecutor late yesterday afternoon with the intent of having them undergo inquest.
The NBI, however, failed to meet the 4:30 p.m. deadline so the two will have to be brought back to the prosecutor’s office today.
The NBI took part in the investigation on the Land Bank heist last Aug. 4 upon the request of Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia and bank manager Ramon Destajo.
Squealed
The bureau, through supervising agent Arnel Pura, had the two security guards, Cuerda and Rogelio Baterna, undergo a lie detector test.
Cuerda failed.
Cuerda then allegedly had a change of heart and, in a sworn statement issued in front of his lawyer, Luisito Arma, decided to rat out the three other men—Somabong, Ancero and Partner.
The Cebu Provincial Police Office, which had primary jurisdiction on the case, followed up on the description Jocelyn Antigua, one of the bank’s tellers, gave of one of the armed robbers.
The description matched that of Ancajas, who had a pending arrest warrant issued by the Regional Trial Court.
Ancajas has denied any involvement in the robbery and Cuerda, answering questions from the media, said he never saw Ancajas before.
Serbano, for his part, got impleaded after the police and the NBI found the maroon Nissan Vanette, with plate number CLA-333, near the Department of Public Works and Highways building in Bogo.
Insider
The vehicle was registered to one Wilfredo Garcia of Pulilan, Bulacan, but verification revealed that Serbano has bought the vehicle, although he has not transferred it to his name.
The 35-year-old Cuerda is an employee of Odin Security Agency Inc., assigned to the Land Bank branch in Bogo. He’s been working there for over 10 years.
In his written admission, he said he was the “insider” who signaled the rest of the gang that the money from Aspac bank, which was what the robbery group had been targeting, had arrived and was about to be placed in the vault.
Cuerda said he knew Somabong because he was a friend and a neighbor in Sitio Dawis in Barangay Danban. Somabong, he said, is believed to be formerly with the New People’s Army and has quite a record in Masbate.
Somabong, he said, approached him in November last year and invited him to join a planned hit against the collection of the Cebu Electric Cooperative (Cebeco) 2 field office in Barangay Malingin, Bogo, near where Ancero lived.
Cebeco, Cuerda explained, deposits its money in Land Bank. The bank’s armored van gets the money from Cebeco and transports it to the bank.
He said Somabong wanted him to provide the details of the trip.
Details
The next time they met, he said, was in the night of April 3, 2005. The meeting was in Barangay Cayang in Bogo. Ancero accompanied Somabong, and they talked in a secluded area near the Bong-aw Elementary School.
In that meeting, Ancero and Somabong asked about technical information such as the number of bolts in the wheels of an armored car and whether tubeless tires are used.
Cuerda said the meeting adjourned with the two demanding that he give them a call the next time the bank’s guards take the van to Cebu City. He was given a new cell phone and a new subscriberi dentity module (SIM) card for the unit.
“He (Somabong) also inquired about the schedule of our armored van’s trip to Hagnaya port where we collect deposit/remittances coming from Aspac Bank in Bantayan Island,” Cuerda said.
The next meeting, he revealed, transpired four days later and was done inside Somabong’s house. Somabong was with Ancero and “Partner.” This was the first time he met the third player in the heist, and more details about the Aspac collection was discussed.
There, he was told to regularly feed accurate information to the group about the van’s routes and trips and, if they ever got found out, to deny everything.
Threat
He said Somabong threatened to kill him and his family if he didn’t comply.
Another meeting in Maharat, Bogo followed.
There, he was given two new SIM cards, one of which he used whenever he had to send messages about the Aspac account.
“I was asked who were the other security guards who usually manned the armored car and I provided them with the names of Jomar Verallo, Rogelio Baterna and Rodolfo Elarde. They also inquired about what firearms we carry. I replied that we were armed with shotguns but whether my companions would shoot it out with them depends on the situation,” Cuerda said.
It was last June 8, when some men fired at the van while it was cruising along Barangay Lanao on its way to Cebu City, that he realized the planned hit was really serious.
Signal
Prior to the incident, and as agreed during the meeting in Barangay Cayang, he placed a missed call to Somabong’s phone using one of the SIMs Somabong gave him, to signal that the van was going on a scheduled trip to the city.
They met two days after the incident at a place called Sayding in Barangay Malingin. There, the three told him that it was they who shot at the van and asked why the van was able to evade the attack.
“I told them they failed to hit the tire,” he said, adding that he was given P500 after that.
They met again sometime in the second week of July and two weeks after that. In both meetings, the Aspac account was discussed. A deposit to Land Bank was expected last Aug. 2.
Cuerda said he met with the three around noon of that day.
They met in Somabong’s house where a sketch of the bank, showing the vault, the most likely spot where the employees would be, and the manager’s alarm triggering device was located, was reviewed.
He said he went back to the bank and, around 4 p.m., through his cell phone, sent Somabong a text message that the Aspac money had arrived.
He sent a second message detailing how many people were in the bank at that time and a third message, sent at 7:25 p.m., related that he was already in the process of carrying the money into the vault.
Manhunt
It was at this point that the robbers hit the bank.
He said he saw Somabong, Ancero and Partner enter the bank and overpower the employees, dragging them into the valued clients cubicle.
He sensed two more persons joining them inside but failed to identify them because he was also hogtied and brought into the cubicle.
De Lemos, during yesterday’s conference, assured that the NBI and the PNP will continue the manhunt, as well as try to recover the P9.4-million loot.
He said the bank employees have given them leads.
(August 12, 2005 issue)
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