Female tagged as 'lookout' in Veterans Bank-UP campus heist

A woman earlier tagged in a bank robbery in Quezon City is said to be the one who acted as the “lookout” of the armed robbers who attacked an armored van inside the University of the Philippines-Diliman campus that left three people dead on Monday.

As this developed, the Quezon City Police District is also doing a profiling of the security guards of establishments in the metropolis earlier victimized by the same group who staged Monday’s heist to determine if they had any link with the robbers.

Chief Inspector Enrico Figueroa, chief of the QCPD’s Theft and Robbery Investigation Section, said a woman acted as the “spotter” of the heavily armed men who attacked the van of Dasia Security Agency and shot dead security guards Rene Demerey, Renato Reyes and teller Genaro Aguirre before taking away the undetermined amount of cash. “At the height of the gunbattle, a witness saw her (female spotter) casually walking away from the scene. She said the woman even looked at her in the face,” Figueroa told reporters in an interview.

Figueroa said the witness recalled seeing the “female spotter” once in the vicinity of the UP Bahay ng Alumni, where there is a branch of the Philippine Veterans Bank, days before Monday’s heist.

“When we showed her (witness) the pictures of those included in our rouges gallery, she pointed to the woman who also acted as the spotter of the suspects in the (West Avenue branch of the) Landbank (of the Philippines) robbery that happened earlier this year,” Figueroa said.

Figueroa believes the woman had conducted a “casing” of the bank at the UP Bahay ng Alumni by posing as a client days before the robbery on Monday.

QCPD deputy director for operations Senior Superintendent Federico Laciste Jr. said they would “cross match” the security guards of the establishments in Metro Manila earlier victimized by the same thieves to determine their background and see any pattern pointing to a possible link with the robbery group.

“Some of them (security guards) may have been sacked as a result of the robberies at the establishments they were guarding. And then it could be that the same thing happened to the other companies they got transferred to. If the same names will come up, (then we will see a pattern),” Laciste told The STAR in a separate interview.

 “We’d like to know who among them (security guards) transferred from one agency to another or which training schools they attended,” Laciste, who is the designated head of the task force formed to solve the robbery and the killings, hinted.

The QCPD earlier revealed that the robbers were the same ones who staged eight other heists in the metropolis: at IDS Logistics in Parañaque on July 10; Freshtex in Muntinlupa on July 16; Teletech in Cainta, Rizal in August; Scimtar Marketing in Manila on Sept. 26; WellBest in Pasig City on Oct. 1; LRT Depot in Pasay City on Oct. 13; Wilcon Builders Depot on Oct. 31; and St, Scholastica’s College in Manila on Oct. 31.

Moreover, There were similarities used in the vehicles tagged in these robberies and license plates similar to the plate number SFV905 initially attached to the blue Mitsubishi Adventure used as one of the get-away vehicles of the suspects last Monday were sighted in the past incidents. Some of the numerals or letters in the plate number were said to have been tampered in the different robbery incidents.

Yesterday, Laciste revealed that the robbers were also the same group who staged the heist at a warehouse of the National Food Authority in Marikina City on July 23.

Laciste’s statement came after QCPD officials started looking into the possible complicity of the surviving driver of the armored van whose actions during the robbery appeared to be suspicious and “not normal.” The driver will undergo a lie-detector test. Laciste told to The STAR that they believe the suspects in Monday’s heist are still in Luzon, and that the “hunter teams” formed by the QCPD to locate them are currently searching areas in the metropolis and Regions 3 and 4 to locate them.