2 who posed as CPD cops face charges

Charges of robbery-extortion were filed the other day against two men, who posed as agents of the Central Police District, in the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office.

Charged were Napoleon Litonjua, 47, of Project 6, Quezon City and Augusto De Vera, 47, of 10th Avenue, Caloocan City. The suspects were arrested for extortion on Tuesday after a businesswoman complained to the CPD-La Loma Station that she had been asked to buy five tickets costing P5,000 each for a fund raising drive of the policemen called "Police Files."

Karen Chua, 28, married, owner of Prima Klase Salon located at Del Monte Avenue, Quezon City, reported to the police that two men identified themselves as operatives of CPD had harassed her to force her into buying tickets amounting to P25,000.

PO3 Alejandro Serrano, officer on case, said the suspects together with an unidentified man, alighted from a jeep (DRB 430) at about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and went inside the establishment of the complainant.

The suspects threatened her by displaying their guns to make her buy the tickets and demanded payment in cash.

The complainant told the suspects that she could only buy one ticket and offered to issue a check for the rest but the bogus cops told her that they would return at 4 p.m. to collect payment in cash.

Suspicious that the proceeds of the tickets would not go to children of slain policemen, the complainant immediately called up the Sulu Hotel in Quezon City which was the supposed venue where the affair would be held, to check if there was a reservation for the raffle of the tickets.

A reservation officer, identified as Cristy, said a group of men had reserved a function room for the fund raising and raffling of tickets.

After paying a P5,000 reservation fee, the group has not confirmed the holding of the activity on the date reserved. – Pia Lee-Brago