Petroleum tanker driver faces narcotics trafficking case

COTABATO CITY — The Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-12 has filed a criminal case against a detained itinerant shabu dealer who had used his job as a petroleum lorry driver to circulate shabu in different areas in Mindanao.

Aileen Lovitos, director of PDEA-12, on Thursday said that the 44-year-old Lloyd Macias Villegas, who was entrapped last Sunday by their agents in the town proper of Alabel, is now awaiting prosecution for violation of the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.

Villegas, who had confessed to having distributed shabu to contacts in different Mindanao provinces and cities where he moved around as driver of a fuel tanker owned by a private petroleum importing firm, was a high value target of PDEA personnel in Region 12 and the Bangsamoro region and units of the Police Regional Office-12.

PDEA-12 agents and policemen immediately detained him after selling to them P31,000 worth of shabu in a tradeoff last Sunday in Alabel, laid with the help of workers of different petroleum retail stations aware of his illegal drug dealing activities.

Lovitos said PDEA-12 is thankful to the office of Police Brig. Gen. Percival Augustus Placer, PRO-12 director, for supporting their operation that resulted in the arrest of Villages, now clamped down in a detention facility.