 |
| Ester P. Ylagan |
Ylagan. looking noticeably thinner, showed up at The SUN’s office in the evening of Dec. 13, claiming once again that she had been duped into parting with the money she meant to pay her irate job applicants.
She was apparently flushed out of hiding by a TV news report in the Philippines which aired early last month, in which she was branded an illegal recruiter while a video of her conducting a briefing for her job applicants in Hong Kong was shown.
She said she wanted to speak up to clear the air, and also to seek advice.
She furnished a copy of the statement she gave to police on Dec 5 in which she accused a former friend of fraudulently taking over ownership of a flat on Yue Kok street in Aberdeen which she used to co-own with her recently deceased husband, Rick Ylagan.
Ylagan said the friend had caused her and her husband to transfer their joint ownership of the 2-bedroom, seaview flat to their 24-year-old son, Ridge Michael, on the understanding that the property would eventually be sold to satisfy the claims against her.
Instead, Michael was somehow tricked into transferring ownership of the flat to this trusted friend.
Ylagan also hinted that her MPF savings had been drained by the same friend who allegedly told her the money would go towards her legal defense and to pay off the claims.
While this was happening, Ylagan said she was advised by her former friend to go underground and to deactivate all her social media accounts while the case against her in Hong Kong was being sorted out. She was reportedly told she would be arrested and thrown in jail if she returned here.
Ylagan claimed that in the 15 months that she had stayed away from Hong Kong she was not aware that the claims against her by more than 300 Filipino job applicants in Hong Kong, Macau and the Philippines were still being pursued.
She reportedly only learned of this when she saw the TV news report, and somehow finally managed to access reports published by The SUN in both its print and online platforms.
In an earlier statement she gave to police on July 8 last year, Ylagan, a 30-year-veteran of the recruitment business, said she had been tricked into offering the fictitious jobs by a certain “William Clinton”.
This Clinton guy supposedly caused her to send a total of $4.194 million to various recipients in places such as Burkina Faso and Nigeria in West Africa.
She claimed she was not to be paid any cash for recruiting for Clinton, but would be rewarded with a British passport, 15 air tickets to London, and “an opportunity to explore the UK market”.
She in turn, was to collect $15,000 from each job applicant for Canada, and $10,000 for those applying to work in Britain. Given the number of claimants running after her for a refund of their money, Ylagan could have collected as much as $5 million from the scam.
But with her flat gone and her once highly profitable Emry’s Employment Agency shut down, Ylagan says she has no money left to repay the applicants. In fact, she told The SUN she was applying for legal aid so she could claim back her house and sell it so she could satisfy the claims of all those running after her.
The fantastic claim has, however, already been rejected by most claimants who have remained firm in demanding a refund, and for Ylagan to be held to account for fraud for the spurious job offers.
