21 Caloocan teachers seek help to keep swindling suspect in jail

MANILA, PHilippines - Twenty-one teachers from a Catholic school in Caloocan City are asking Mayor Enrico Echiverri to help them keep an alleged large-scale swindler in jail.

The teachers, who requested anonymity, trooped to the Caloocan City police station upon learning of the arrest of Virgilio Benin, who allegedly pretended to be an engineer and sold them non-existent house and lots.

“We were so trusting and so taken by his promises and the low prices he offered for us to be able to own the property. We were so naive,” the teachers said.

They said Benin must have swindled no fewer than 300 individuals of P5 million.

The teachers said Benin sold them house and lots measuring an average of 30 square meters at Northville 2B in Bagumbong ranging from P10,000 to P60,000.

Echiverri early on told the first batch of about 40 complainants that the Northville 2B village is reserved only for rail dwellers in Caloocan displaced by the North Rail Project.

Benin reportedly said the complainants can transfer to their property in Northville a month after paying the processing fee, ranging from P10,000 to P40,000.

The suspect, now in police custody after being collared in an entrapment operation, denied he defrauded his victims and claimed he never received anything from the transactions.

He said of the P10,000 reservation fee, P4,000 went to the real estate agents while P6,000 went to a “Jessie Zaragosa” at the National Housing Authority (NHA) main office in Quezon City.

Realty agent and complainant Estrella Yap said that upon verifying with the NHA, they found out that Benin was never an employee of the agency, as he claimed to be.

Yap added that there was no employee by the name of Jessie Zaragosa to whom Benin allegedly remitted the payments, and there is no “Jane Pamintuan,” the signatory on the bogus NHA official receipt Benin issued to the complainants.

City police chief Senior Superintendent Jude Santos urged victims to come to the police station and file appropriate charges against Benin.

Benin is facing multiple counts of large-scale estafa, robbery-extortion and falsification of documents before various courts.