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Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Illegal recruitment suspect, with child in tow, arrested
By Karlon N. Rama
Sun.Star Staff Reporter
It was like a scene straight from cop shows — two undercover agents silently following the suspect into a crowded restaurant. After the money changes hands, the prearranged signal is flashed.
And before anybody else notices what went down, the suspect is subdued, quietly cuffed and led out to a waiting vehicle.
This arrest was different, though. It involved not some big-time drug lord or would-be murderer packing heat. The suspect was a forty-something mother carrying a two-year old Down syndrome child with a colostomy bag.
But suspects come in different forms and sizes, said agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). And like the others, Maria Lyn Andre, also known as Ann-ann Ong and Julia Orcullo, gets to spend the night at the bureau stockade.
Operatives arrested Andre at the SM City Mall food court early yesterday afternoon, after she met with a couple she had allegedly recruited for a bogus job in Indonesia.
The couple, Rosalie and Jade Bada, was supposed to make their final installment on the placement fees Andre imposed.
Unknown to her, the couple, hailing from Cagayan de Oro City, had gone to the NBI and reported their suspicion that Andre was an illegal recruiter.
Andre, interviewed at the NBI headquarters, admitted being involved in illegal recruitment.
She said she was doing it to make ends meet for her and her child.
Lawyer Renan Oliva, an NBI special agent, showed Sun.Star Cebu a certification from the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) that proves Andre has no license to engage in recruitment and placement activities.
“We are preparing the transmittal letter for City Prosecutor Nicolas Sellon. We are charging her for large scale estafa and violation of the Migrant Workers Act,” Oliva said.
Rosalie, in an interview at the NBI headquarters, said she began to suspect that Andre’s promised job was bogus when Andre sent the couple photocopies of visas that had already been issued in their name for their trip abroad.
“I have already tried working abroad. I worked in Kuwait before. I noticed that the photocopies of the documents were different from the ones I was issued with for my work in Kuwait. The numbers indicated in the supposed visas for me and my husband were also identical,” she said in Cebuano.
Oliva said Andre’s alleged victims began showing up at the NBI office yesterday afternoon after word got out that Andre was in their custody. Many of the other victims also hailed from Cagayan de Oro City.
“We are getting all their affidavits so we can file the needed number of cases,” Oliva said.
(December 28, 2005 issue)
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