EDITORIAL - Hope is good, but reality hurts

One can only sympathize with the thousands of pyramiding scam victims of Manuel Amalilio as they cling to the hope that they can still recover the billions of pesos they have been duped into investing.

After all, with their money gone and Amalilio still in Malaysian custody with no clear indication of being repatriated anytime soon, what truly is there left for these investors other than the consolation of hoping.

But it is one thing to hope and another to expect. And as far as the latter is concerned, the investors had better perish the thought. It is very unlikely if Amalilio still has even just a tenth of the money invested by the victims.

In fact, the clearest indication that Amalilio no longer has the money invested by the victims is that he got caught. A man with the kind of money he is accused of having duped the victims of could have easily made himself invisible.

There are a lot of places in this world to hide for a man with money. Money can buy connections. Connections can open doors. Unless one is a terrorist or a fugitive from justice in any of the superpowers, none of these doors will likely open to Third World knockings.

One senator has proven how easy it is to disappear for as long as one has the means. In fact, one does not have to be a senator at all. Just being a sister of one is sometimes enough to simply vanish into thin air.

Not that he didn’t want to, but Amalilio could have done so, only that he no longer had the means to. For it would have been unimaginable for him to just wait for fate to catch up with him if he had to money to disappear.

But he no longer had, hence the seeming ease with which he was eventually arrested. This is what the victims of the scam should look at. They need to come to grips with the creeping reality that their money is indeed gone. The sooner they do so, the better for them to move on.