A CEBU City court has dismissed criminal charges against artist and writer Maria Victoria “Bambi” Beltran, ruling that her satirical Facebook post during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic was not a deliberate spread of false information.
In a decision by Judge Merlo Bagano of Regional Trial Court Branch 14, the court found that the prosecution failed to prove Beltran’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt for the alleged violation of Article 154 of the Revised Penal Code, in relation to Republic Act 10175, or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
Beltran had been charged with the unlawful use of means of publication and unlawful utterances after she posted on Facebook that Sitio Zapatera in Barangay Luz, Cebu City as an epicenter of Covid-19 cases.
Beltran’s 2020 Facebook post, which sparked the case, read: “9,000+ new cases (All from Zapatera) of Covid-19 in Cebu City in one day. We are now the epicenter in the whole Solar System.”
“The exaggerated phrase, ‘the epicenter in the whole Solar System,’ is clearly rhetorical in nature and not intended to be taken as a literal factual claim,” reads a portion of the decision dated Aug. 14, 2025.
The court also noted that prior to Beltran’s post, multiple news outlets had already reported that Sitio Zapatera in Barangay Luz was a Covid-19 epicenter in Cebu City, undermining the prosecution’s claim that she had fabricated information.
In the ruling, Bagano said the prosecution failed to establish two key elements required for a conviction: that the post was knowingly false and that it was made with the intent to mislead the public.
“The prosecution’s evidence was largely confined to the identification of the post and the circumstances surrounding the arrest of the accused. It did not go so far as to establish the essential elements required to sustain a conviction under Article 154,” Bagano wrote. / DPC