A 28-YEAR-OLD woman will face trial for allegedly stealing the automated teller machine (ATM) card and more than P100,000 deposits of a Cebu City court judge, leaving him only P86 in his account.
Assistant City Prosecutor Fatima Asjali-Maadil found enough evidence to indict Jeah Marie Moreno Caneda with violation of Republic Act (RA) 8484, or the Access Devices Act of 1998.
Caneda allegedly switched an ATM card with that of Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 22 Judge Manuel D. Patalinghug’s on July 21, 2014.
Before the incident, Patalinghug and his staffer Whisly Basanal went to a mall to withdraw money from his Land Bank ATM, an access device.
Caneda was ahead of them, trying to withdraw money from the ATM of a private bank.
She later offered Patalinghug to use the ATM first because she experienced problems with her ATM card.
Patalinghug, in his affidavit, said he instructed Basanal to withdraw P10,000, while the accused stood behind the latter.
“I just ignored her since I never suspected her to be a bad element after she earlier exhibited to me a kind gesture by allowing me to use the ATM ahead of her,” he said.
After Patalinghug got the money, Caneda asked him if he could give her a favor by allowing her to examine his ATM card and compare it with hers because she can only withdraw P1,000, instead of P5,000.
“Feeling obliged to return the favor she earlier gave me, I readily handed to her my ATM card without hesitation and without even bothering to keep a watchful on her while examining my ATM card,” Patalinghug said.
The accused later gave the ATM card back to the judge, who was thinking the card was his.
Surprised
Three days later, Patalinghug and Basanal returned to the mall to withdraw again.
“To my surprise, I could no longer make any withdrawal from my ATM account. When I examined the ATM card, I discovered that it was not in my name but in the name of a certain ‘Josefina Montebon,’” he said.
Patalinghug immediately inquired from Land Bank-P. Del Rosario branch about his account’s status and he was told that his deposits of P101,817.60 were withdrawn on six occasions. Only P86.30 was left in his account.
The judge had the incident recorded in the blotter of Cebu City Police Station 4 in Barangay Mabolo.
He was later told about a woman who was arrested in Mandaue City for allegedly doing the same scheme that victimized him.
Identified
Basanal went to the police station and identified Caneda as the woman who stole Patalinghug’s ATM card.
Asjali-Maadil resolved the case in a preliminary investigation last Sept. 23, after Caneda failed to submit her counter-affidavit. The case was filed in RTC-Office of the Clerk of Court last Feb. 4.
Bail was set at P20,000 for the accused, a resident of Barangay Pakigne, Minglanilla.
RA 8484 defines the crime as “the use of falsified document, false information, fictitious identities and addresses, or any form of false pretense or misrepresentation” in the application of an access device.
Under Section 9, one of prohibited acts is “using, with intent to defraud, an unauthorized access device.”