A PAWNSHOP appraiser ended up getting arrested after police learned that she staged the robbery that she earlier reported to them.
Sr. Insp. Noel Lomente of the Carbon Police Station said they received a call yesterday from Grace Jasangas, 25, who told them that Dinero Pawnshop and Jewelry was robbed at around 10 a.m. Jasangas has worked at the pawnshop for five years.
Jasangas reportedly told police that she was alone in the pawnshop, located at Freedom
Park in Barangay Ermita, Cebu City, when two men arrived and announced the robbery.
The pawnshop reportedly does not have a security guard.
But when policemen went to the pawnshop, they noticed that Jasangas’s statements contradicted.
Lomente said Jasangas told them the suspects went inside the pawnshop but based on their investigation, there was no indication that a robbery took place.
They also asked the stall operators near the pawnshop and learned that no one went inside the pawnshop around the time that the two men supposedly arrived.
Admission
Out of fear, Jasangas then confessed that she took the jewelry pieces amounting to P1.5 million. She said she placed these in a plastic bag, which she gave to two male friends who were waiting outside the pawnshop that same day.
Sun.Star Cebu tried to get Jasangas’s statement but she declined to be interviewed by the media.
Lomente told Jasangas to return the jewelry, so she contacted her two male friends, who left the jewelry at a tattoo shop in Barangay Labangon. Among the jewelry
recovered were 54 gold rings, 41 pairs of gold earrings, 14 gold necklaces, three gold bracelets, one bungled gold bracelet, and 10 gold pendants.
Lomente said they were not able to apprehend the two male contacts of Jasangas, who is detained at the Carbon Police Station stockade pending the filing of who will be facing a case for qualified theft.
The pawnshop owner, meanwhile, is conducting an inventory to check if Jasangas had been stealing from the pawnshop prior to yesterday’s incident.