CIDG: Carjackers targeting online sellers

MANILA, Philippines - Carjackers are now targeting car owners trying to sell their vehicles through online advertisements, the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) said yesterday.

CIDG chief Director Samuel Pagdilao Jr. said the carjackers’ new modus operandi is to contact would-be victims, ask to test drive the car, steal it, then sell the same car on a buy-and-sell website.

The CIDG said the new scheme was discovered after an alleged runner of a car theft syndicate was arrested in an entrapment in Quezon City last week.

Operatives of the CIDG-National Capital Region identified the alleged runner as Michael Udasco, 26.

“In the light of the arrest of Udasco, we are appealing to people who arrange transactions via the Internet to be extra careful in dealing with prospective buyers or sellers,” Pagdilao said.

Udasco was arrested for selling a stolen black Mazda 3 with license plate NWQ-882 to CIDG operatives at the parking lot of Victoria Towers on Timog Avenue in Quezon City.

Pagdilao said it was the car stolen from Rosherrie Anne Magpantay Skrilec, 32, a businesswoman from Pasig City, who earlier lodged a complaint at the CIDG that Richard Co Go stole her brown Mazda 3 bearing license plate TWO-956 last Dec. 16.

Skrilec told probers that she met Go last November after she posted an advertisement at an online forum that she is selling her Mazda. Go called her up allegedly to buy her car.

She later agreed to meet Co Go to test drive her car. But when they stopped at a fast food restaurant in Taguig, the suspect sped off when she alighted from her car.

Two days later, Skrilec and the CIDG investigators surfed the website www.sulit.com.ph, where they came across a black Mazda 3 being sold by Eric Co, whose contact numbers were the same ones Go used to contact Skrilec. Co was also selling several sport utility vehicles.

Posing as would-be buyers, the CIDG agents contacted Co, who agreed to meet them. Udasco showed up in his stead and was arrested.

The CIDG charged Udasco with carnapping, falsification of documents and robbery-extortion.

Another victim, Jerome Ferdinand Ociano, 31, of Makati City, sought the CIDG’s help after he found out that the car he bought last Dec. 16 had spurious documents. He bought the car from a seller who posted an ad at the same website Co had used. Ociano surrendered the car to the CIDG last Dec. 24.