Barangay treasurer booked for issuing fake ‘cedulas’

Caloocan City Mayor Enrico Echiverri was fuming mad the other day after learning that a local barangay treasurer was issuing fake community tax certificates (CTCs) or cedulas.

"We cannot countenance this wrongdoing and by a trusted barangay official at that. We assure the public, however, that this is an isolated case. The majority of your officials are trustworthy and persons you can rely on to do their duties conscientiously and as the law says," said Echiverri, who, earlier on, said the practice was depriving the city of needed extra funds.

Outgoing Caloocan City police chief Senior Superintendent Leo Garra identified the suspect as Lorna Palmario, 38, Barangay 72, treasurer, a resident of the Victory Liner Compound in Monumento, Caloocan City.

Seized from the suspect, the second to fall in the anti-fake cedula campaign by City Hall, was a booklet of the fake cedulas.

She claimed she had been doing it for the last four years and was issuing original genuine CTCs from City Hall.

Garra presented Palmario to Northern Police District director Chief Superintendent Leopoldo Bataoil.

The NPD chief also ordered his men to run after others engaged in the same illegal trade in the Camanava area.

When asked where she got her cedulas, Palmario said she received it from persons "in the vicinity of City Hall."

Palmario pointed to a certain "Vicky," the same person named and described by the first suspect arrested last Friday in the cedula scam.

SPO1 Feliciano Almojuela Jr., officer-in-charge, said they filed charges of large scale estafa and falsification of public documents against Palmario after some 18 teachers in the city, to whom she issued the bogus certificates on several occasions between Jan. 7 to 23, 2006, lodged a complaint before the police.

The victims were teachers of the Kasarinlan Elementary School on Tuna street, in Dagat-dagatan, Caloocan.

Palmario told The STAR she voluntarily surrendered to the police after talking things over with the school principal last week even before the issue came out in the papers.

She said she also returned the money she took from the teachers, who paid in various amounts from P125 to P202 each for the fake cedulas.

Echiverri ordered a crackdown against fake cedulas Friday last week after a teacher earlier complained a fake CTC was issued to her. – Jerry Botial