Filipino-American robbery victim turns out to be a con man

The Quezon City police said yesterday a man who claimed to be a visiting Filipino-American Harvard law student victimized by robbers in a cab turned out to be a con artist who could not even say where the university was located.

The suspect told Quezon City policemen that his real name is Richard Sangalang, 24, and he left his hometown in Tarlac six years ago, taking odd jobs until he found himself in Metro Manila last year.

The cabbie Sangalang tagged as the robber who took P500,000 in cash and valuables from him was released yesterday morning, said Superintendent Franklin Moises Mabanag, chief of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit of the Quezon City Police District.

Interviewed by The STAR yesterday morning, Sangalang – who earlier talked to policemen and journalists in English – was already speaking in Filipino, saying he only came up with the fake story so “someone would pity me.”

Mabanag said they found that there was no record of “Nathan Santos Smith” arriving from California, purportedly to attend the wedding of a relative in Baguio.

He also said the Baguio City address Sangalang gave the police is that of a school, not his relative. Mabanag himself had given the suspect P2,500 as bus fare to go to Baguio after he went to the police with his story about being robbed of every last centavo.

When police started interrogating “Smith” about his supposed ordeal, Mabanag said Sangalang started acting like an “insane” person, “occasionally talking to himself and staring blankly.”

Chief Inspector Cherry Lou Donato then brought Sangalang to her office and asked him to finally tell them the real story.

“He told me he was driven away by his own family in Capas, Tarlac after he was found stealing from his own parents,” Donato said.

“He (Sangalang) was 18 years old at that time and since then, he started transferring from one place to another, gaining the sympathy and pity of households and shops, in most cases canteens, where he would stay for a while before leaving again to find another host,” she said.

Mabanag said they were still contemplating which case to file against Sangalang, saying the latter could be charged with either perjury for the fake report he filed and concealing his real identity or incriminatory machination for accusing Gallardo of a crime he did not do.