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Three
Filipina domestic helpers and a local woman working as a waitress were immediately
taken behind bars yesterday, July 17, after they were all convicted of “dealing
in property known or believed to be proceeds of indictable offense,” otherwise
known as money laundering.
Found
guilty of one count each of the charge were Wong Siu-kuen, 53 years old, Marife
Dionson, 43; Geraldine Tolentino, 38; and Ires Calinawagan, 40. They will be sentenced
on July 30, after background reports on them are submitted to court.
Eastern
Magistrate Minnie Wat disregarded the four defendants’ claim that they had no
knowledge of the huge sums that passed through their respective bank accounts between
June and August 2020, which were traced to money transfers made by a love scam
victim.
Magistrate
Wat said that while the accused did not make the illicit bank transfers
themselves, it was enough that they gave up control over their accounts, which facilitated
the money laundering.
She
said “bank accounts are valuable personal properties” which should be guarded at
all costs. In any normal course of event, she said holders of such accounts
should be held accountable for all transactions made through them.
The
magistrate noted that all of the defendants had signed up to get their monthly
bank statements by mail, so they could not deny any knowledge of the large sums
that were deposited into their accounts, then hurriedly withdrawn.
In
Wong’s case in particular, two bank statements were even found inside her
handbag when she was arrested.
In
any case, the magistrate said she found the defendants’ statements as to how their
accounts ended up being used for illegal purposes not credible.
Wong
was found guilty of letting her Hang Seng Bank account be the depository for
$776,460 between June 15 and Aug. 20, 2020.
Dionson
was found to have allowed her HSBC account to be used to launder proceeds of a
crime, when a total of $358,300 passed through it between 8th and
9th of July 2020.
Tolentino
was likewise found guilty of allowing her HSBC account to host $566,438 in
crime earnings between 15th and 20th of July
2020.
In
Calinawagan’s case, her HSBC account was used to launder a total of $714,406 between
10th and 23rd of July 2020.
They
were all declared complicit in the crime, despite claiming that they had merely
lent their ATM cards to another person, or that in the case of the fourth
defendant, that she lost it shortly after she opened her bank account.
According
to the prosecution, the money that went to the defendants' bank accounts had
come from a total of $1,850,265 that a local woman working as a secretary lost
to a man named "Zhang" who became her online boyfriend for five
months in 2020.
The
victim surnamed Wong, told the court she transferred some $1.6 million from her
Bank of China accounts to various accounts of unknown people after someone
claiming to be from a courier company told her she needed to pay some fees for
a package sent to her by Zhang.
Later,
she was also charged for "interest payments" as the package
supposedly contained a large amount of cash.
Earlier, a fourth Filipina who was also accused of allowing her
bank account to be used to launder proceeds from the same love scam, was sent
to jail for eight months after admitting the charge.
Maila Samson, 50 years old, was meted the sentence by Magistrate
Wat, despite her lawyer pleading for a lighter punishment.
Using the usual starting point of 12 months in jail, the
magistrate only allowed the standard one-third discount for the defendant’s
guilty plea.
This could indicate that all the four other defendants would be
given this standard sentence as they opted to go to trial instead of admitting
guilt at the outset.
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