2 businessmen get 200 years for estafa

Two businessmen were sentenced to almost two centuries of jail time each by the Makati City regional trial court for duping several investors of $37,750 in a foreign currency trading scam in 2001, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said yesterday.

Convicted of seven counts of syndicated estafa and five counts of simple estafa were Reynaldo Patacsil and Enrico Lopez, key officials of the Belkin Management Consultancy Inc. and Bestway Multi-Resources Inc.

Syndicated estafa involves cases in which victims are duped of over P100,000 while simple estafa covers offenses in which victims are duped of less than P100,000. The penalty for syndicated estafa is 10 to 20 years imprisonment.

While Patacsil and Lopez were sentenced to serve 70 to 140 years in prison for the syndicated estafa charges plus 20 to 46 years imprisonment for the five counts of simple estafa, State Prosecutor Peter Ong said the two convicts will only have to serve jail time of 40 years.

Patacsil and Lopez were ordered to pay complainants Eleanor Garcia, Dionisio Gonzales and Ma. Theresa Camet the amount they invested in the fraudulent trading. Garcia put in $26,250, while Gonzales and Camet each shelled out $5,000 and $6,500, respectively.

The judge acquitted the other accused in the case: Luzviminda Portugez, Mariano Pefianco Jr., Sharon Jane Lauruan and Corazon Kanenari, while Pakistani Khawar Rafi Abbasi was deported.

The acquittal stemmed from the fact that they did not participate in the formation of the corporations and were merely hired as employees.

The judge said it was not established that there was a conspiracy among all the accused to defraud the public.

Makati City Judge Manuel Victorio said in his 35-page decision that the evidence was "overwhelmingly abundant" that fraud was employed by Patacsil and Lopez in soliciting funds from the public for their bogus foreign currency trading operations.

Victorio said the two merely used the companies as fronts to sweet talk the complainants and the general public to make investments promising huge profits.

He said it was established that the funds deposited by the investors were never traded in a foreign currency market and that the complainants’ requests for withdrawal of their money were never granted.

The judge added that the trading activities conducted on the "trading floor" by the Belkin and Bestway were simulated and the "dealers" merely manipulated the transactions so that it would seem as if the funds had been lost in the market.

"What is worse is that the corporations were not organized to engage in foreign currency trading," Victorio said. "In fact, such activity was explicitly excepted from their primary purpose."

The judge convicted only Patacsil and Lopez because they founded and ran the corporations involved in the scam.

Patacsil was the founder and owner of Belkin and Bestway. He was also proven to have used the alias "Joseph Tanhuatco" in signing documents for the firms.

Patacsil belied all the allegations and claimed he resigned as president of Belkin when he ran for congressman of Las Piñas in 2001 and was replaced by Lopez.

Lopez, who was also Belkin’s treasurer, denied having anything to do with the trading of investments but admitted he was general manager and, later, president of Belkin.

Former employees of the two firms testified for the prosecution after the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) raided their offices based on a complaint filed by the companies’ officers and staff.