Brillantes’ poll fraud witness a con artist

Two points President Noynoy Aquino stressed in his “last word” yesterday on the Mamasapano debacle:

(1) He was lied to about crucial details of the plan to take down three terrorists in a pre-dawn strike; and

(2) He was told only at dusk of that fateful day that Moro separatists had encircled the assaulting police commandos. By then 44 crack troopers already had been killed.

Perhaps the last verdicts are these:

• P-Noy was lied to by his bosom pal suspended PNP chief Alan Purisima. The latter felt no fidelity to duty, precisely because suspended and reduced to mere weekend practice-shooting partner to P-Noy. In the end, it’s P-Noy’s fault, for entrusting a delicate mission to a cashiered pal.

• If P-Noy is to blame anyone for the late informing, it can only be his other pal, but Purisima’s foe, Interior Sec. Mar Roxas. The Cabinet man in charge of the PNP, Roxas was with P-Noy in Zamboanga City that whole day of Jan. 25. At first Roxas swore in Congress to have told P-Noy of the unfolding crisis only at past 3 p.m., and that a briefing was held two hours after. Later also in Congress Roxas changed his story: he first texted P-Noy before 7 a.m. P-Noy and Roxas should explain the altering of details. It may have something to do with Roxas painfully discovering that P-Noy had kept him out of the loop since 2013 when, incidentally, their favorite whipping boy Dir. Getulio Napeñas was not yet head of the commandos. Likely related too is how Roxas supposedly forgot till Mar. 20 to tell P-Noy about the Board of Inquiry’s invitation to present his side. This was despite the fact that the fiasco was in the news every minute and in every Filipino’s lips for the past two months.

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There’s big trouble at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal-3. Its aircraft loading-unloading Bay No. 114 secretly has been closed. The apron has been sinking because built on an underground spring.

In erecting Terminal-3 starting 1999, contractor Piatco-Fraport’s builder Takenaka Corp. should have applied modern engineering techniques to divert the spring. Instead, it merely dumped sand and gravel. The entire terminal’s foundation could now be compromised.

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Who is alleged election fraud “whistleblower” Worthy N. Acosta? Why is Comelec ex-chief Sixto Brillantes protecting him against critics of the multibillion-peso flawed voting machines?

The two’s affidavits against cheated 2013 election candidates and long-time critical info-technologists are so detailed (see Gotcha, 23 and 25 Mar. 2015). Purportedly the politicians and scientists made Acosta steal and fudge 2013 election ballots. This allegedly was to devise fake proof against the precinct count optical scanners (PCOS) of Venezuelan seller Smartmatic. For good measure, Acosta and Brillantes lumped them with oust-P-Noy plotters, clearly to get Malacañang’s sympathy. Smartmatic’s hacks in the competitor Inquirer also linked to the plotters columnists like me, who are wary of the PCOS, to to taint our objectivity.

But glaringly absent from the affidavits and Inquirer slurs are basic and base details about Acosta, like:

• He ran and lost for municipal councilor in Bataan province in 2013. That must have wiped him out financially. In affidavit he mentions only finding subsequent employment as executive assistant to losing senatorial candidate Tingting Cojuangco.

• About the same time, Mar.-Nov. 2013, Acosta faced trial for fraud at the Pasig City Regional Trial Court-Branch 152, under Judge Danilo S. Cruz. In Criminal Case No. 150502-PSG, Acosta’s ex-employer, a marketing firm, had sued him for absconding with company funds. As a warning to the public, the firm earlier, on May 13, 2012, had Acosta’s name and photo published in the newspapers as wanted by the police. The court consequently ordered him to pay up P69,461, by post-dated ChinaBank check No. 1173438, Feb. 28, 2014.

• In affidavit Acosta alleged that Cojuangco ordered him in late 2013 to divert Typhoon Yolanda relief goods from Tacloban City to ex-Rep. Glenn Chong’s Biliran province. Cojuangco and Chong both deny it. The latter says at that time the Tacloban police checked with him Acosta’s background. For it turned out that, using their names, Acosta allegedly was planning to rob filling stations there.

• When Acosta’s claims against anti-PCOS critics hit the headlines the other week, Chong says, more informants approached him. One was a jail officer whom Acosta had offered P20,000 a month to sneak illegal drugs into detention cells.

• At the height of pork-barrel plunder exposés in June 2014 Acosta devised a con game. He fooled cub reporters into giving him cash, to buy external hard drives into which to transfer supposed wiretaps of senators and Cabinet men with fixer Janet Lim Napoles. One TV reporter parted with P5,700, whereupon Acosta vanished. But criminals can’t resist returning to the crime scene, so weeks later Acosta needled the same reporter for another P7,000. The reporter went to the Quezon City police, who set up an entrapment. Upon payoff Acosta attempted to flee. A car chase ended in his capture. At the police station he confessed to his scam, and offered to recompense the reporter P50,000 to not press charges. He signed an undertaking for it, stressing that he was under no duress. His check bounced.

• Two other reporters presently are preparing affidavits about Acosta’s similar attempts to scam them.

• Also because of Acosta’s self-publicity through his affidavit, more scams were exposed, including his purchaser of prized breed dogs — again through bouncing checks. A simple Facebook check by protector Brillantes would yield sordid details about his “whistleblower.” But then, Brillantes is a computer-illiterate, yet an avid promoter of shifty Smartmatic’s flawed PCOS.

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