A CHINESE national accused of running a mail-order bride website plans to sue the police who raided her company in Barangay Guadalupe, Cebu City.
Mei Yi of Chongqing, China said she will consult her lawyer as to what specific complaints they will file against the team of the Regional Anti-Cybercrime Group (RACG).
“They need to pay all the damages,” she said.
Yi, 29, and Ligaya Vitor, 34, were arrested during the operation led by Senior Insp. Michael Virtudazo.
Virtudazo said they will face any complaint that will be filed against them. “We just did our job,” he said.
Yi and Vitor were released yesterday after they posted the P200,000-bail. Assistant Cebu City Prosecutor Mary Ann Castro had resolved the complaint against them.
Another accused
RACG charged Yi, Vitor, and Leslie Cardenas Tayong with violating Section 4 (b) of Republic Act (RA) 9208, or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act of 2003, as amended by RA 10364, or the Expanded Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act.
Castro filed the information of the case in court after Yi and Vitor opted not to file a counter-affidavit.
The complaint against Tayong will undergo preliminary investigation because she was not present during the raid.
Tayong’s name is on the business permit of the Filipino Heart Internet Consultant (FHIC), which runs www.idateasia.com.
A preliminary investigation is “an inquiry or proceeding to determine whether there is sufficient ground to get a well-founded belief that a crime has been committed and the respondent is probably guilty thereof, and should be held for trial.”
For Vitor, she was shocked when police arrested her. She said she is just a caretaker of Yi’s house.
“Sa akong part, limpyo among konsiyensiya (My conscience is clear),” she said. “Grabe ko nauwawan ani (I’ve been shamed by this arrest).”
Vitor, who has a 13-year-old son, said her family learned about her arrest through news reports.
She said they do not operate a website with pornographic contents.
She said their models are not allowed to see a foreigner without an escort.
Their models are also not allowed to ask for money or go to a hotel room with a foreigner.
Employees’ affidavits
Some of the 12 employees who executed affidavits did not say that FHIC is involved in pornography and in the mail-order bride scheme.
“As a trainee I learned about the company that the purpose of actual meetings with foreign nationals is to be successful for marriage and not sex with fee,” an employee said in his affidavit.
Section 4 (b) of RA 9208 states that “any Filipino woman” should not also be matched “to a foreign national, for marriage for the purpose of acquiring, buying, offering, selling or trading her to engage in prostitution, pornography, sexual exploitation, forced labor, slavery, involuntary servitude or debt bondage.”
A former employee said in her affidavit that they dupe foreigners by pretending to be pretty women.
Amor (real name withheld) said she chatted with an American national in a separate online account last Jan. 9.
She and her two fellow employees met John (real name withheld) two days later. Amor told him the truth about FHIC’s alleged scam.
“Since I knew him to be a regular customer and I knew for a fact that he had spent so much money on the activity, I pitied him,” she said in Cebuano.
John said he arrived in Cebu in 2012 to meet the woman he met online, but the meeting did not happen.
He executed an affidavit against FHIC when Amor told him about the company’s alleged scam.