Former PhilHealth official flags P17.4M worth of questionable collections from OFWs

A former senior auditing specialist of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) on Wednesday flagged some P17.4-million worth of premiums collected from overseas Filipino workers, using supposedly fake receipts.

According to Ken Sarmiento — previously assigned in the POEA OFP Operations Office of PhilHealth which caters to OFWs — his office found some P17,416,800 cost of premiums in question.

He said receipts issued to paying OFWs turned out to be fake, and used serial numbers of receipts already previously issued for legitimate transactions.

Sarmiento said the first fake receipt was reported in September 2015, with P2,400 worth of unremitted premiums paid by OFW Rey Calongcong, and supposedly issued by IEXCEL Manpower Corp.

"Noong na-detect namin 'yung case ni Mr. Calongcong, what we did is we wrote a letter to IEXCEL to inform them of the matter and to explain," he said.

"Pinadala nila operations manager nila and they were cooperative enough to say na meron silang 168 pa na resibo na kuwestiyonable, so we proceeded to verifying them at nakita namin na peke rin po sila," he added.

In September 2018, the agency then reported a total of 224 confirmed cases of falsified receipts, on top of 868 suspected cases, or those with only photocopies of the receipt and lacking the original.

Investigation conducted by Sarmiento's team found that the payments of 7,257 OFWs were not remitted to the agency, and there was P17.4M of premiums in question.

"We learned habang vine-verify namin na nagre-recycle sila. 'Yung grupo na namemeke, nagre-receycle po sila ng receipts officially issued before -- either last year, last month," said Sarmiento.

The serial numbers were used in earlier transactions in the provinces such as Pampanga, Iligan, and Batangas.

From the P2,400 payment of the OFW, Sarmiento said the syndicate would have a sharing scheme, with majority going to the liaison officers.

"We learned through the number of cases that we have gathered na meron pong nagre-recruit sa kanila para i-distribute 'yung fake receipts sa OFW na dine-deploy nila," said Sarmiento.

"Presumably 'yung marketer, siya po 'yung gumagawa ng fake receipt tapos yung liaison office, ang napupunta sa kanya 'yung P1,500," he added.

Sarmiento was citing a certain "Romeo" who supposedly admitted involvement in faking receipts and duping OFWs of their premium payments.

Syndicate

Citing the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), Sarmiento said the group could be called a syndicate based on the number of its members.

"Based po kasi sa POEA IRR, more than five people involved in a questionable act can be described now as a syndicate. We discovered about 40 plus of them and we were able to document at least 12 or 13 of them, so we can fairly say that meron pong sindikato," Sarmiento explained.

"We just don't know kung meron pa po siyang third layer kasi po 'yung skill set need to manufacture and falsify a receipt is different from the skill of marketing and convincing your fellow recruitment agency na idistribute nila ito sa OFW nila," he added.

Sarmiento said there have since been 16 affidavit complaints filed, and some 48 hiring agencies are now being monitored.—AOL, GMA News