Distributor of tip sheets falls to CIDG policemen

Operatives of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group arrested a suspected distributor of masiao tip sheets along R.R. Landon Street, yesterday dawn.

CIDG operatives led by Chief Inspector Rex Derilo conducted a surveillance of a printing press at R.R. Landon Street yesterday dawn.

Later they saw a man later identified as Sonny Tabares, 30, come out of the printing press loading bundles of masiao tip sheets to a waiting taxi with plate number GVJ-465 driven by a certain Lindo Hermoso, 27, of barangay Bacayan, Cebu City.

A woman identified as Flordeliza Recla was also invited for questioning after she was found inside the taxi.

Confiscated from Tabares were 2,200 pieces of "Speed" and 1,200 pieces of "Computer" tip sheets.

During investigation, Tabares, from Dalaguete town, admitted that he sold the tip sheets to masiao coordinators in southern towns of Cebu.

Tabares is presently detained at the CIDG detention cell awaiting the filing of formal charges against him in court.

Police Regional Office-7 chief Silverio Alarcio reminded the police of the one-strike policy being implemented. This means that a police chief is automatically relieved and investigated if another police unit will be able to conduct positive operation in his area of jurisdiction.

The arrest was made two days after a TV report showed that masiao tip sheets are being printed in some major printing presses in the city and openly sold to the public along the sidewalk, in some instances even with law enforcers around.

But police denied the report, although they admitted that masiao still operates in the city. Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Bureau chief Paul Labra II said that masiao operations have already gone down, in fact the masiao operation left is only "five percent" of what it used to be in the 1990s. - Jose P. Sollano and Fred P. Languido