Prosecutor convicted for preying on would-be OFWs

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — A government prosecutor in La Union has been sentenced by a court in this northern city resort to 147 years of imprisonment for large scale illegal recruitment, estafa (fraud) and other offenses. Sentenced by the Baguio Regional Trial Court’s Branch 3 was lawyer Catalino Pepi, assigned as a prosecutor in Agoo town. In a 59-page ruling, Judge Fernando Vil Pamintuan said he found the accused guilty of illegal recruitment in large scale, and ten counts of estafa in 15 cases filed by 13 persons, and another case of simple estafa. Pepi was accused of separately recruiting 13 workers in 2002 for jobs either as factory workers, farmers, technicians and welders in Ireland, England, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The workers sought help from the National Bureau of investigation’s (NBI) when Pepi, who is vice president of Transcend Employment Services, repeatedly failed to fulfill his promise to send them abroad even though they have paid the requirement placement fee in advance. Court records showed that Pepi did not deny recruiting the 13 plaintiffs, did not disown the receipts of the written in yellow pad from his agency. Pepi claimed that although he had no license to recruit in Baguio and the Cordillera, his agency has a license to recruit issued in Manila and that he was acting as an agent and representative of the corporation, being vice president. He also submitted to the Baguio court a decision of an RTC in San Fernando City, La Union acquitting him of an almost similar charge. But Judge Pamintuan gave weight to the testimony of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) that Transcend’s license to recruit was revoked, needing a special recruitment authority from POEA-Cordillera. The court ruled that a license issued by the POEA can not be used in any place other that the place stated in the license and an additional office anywhere shall be subject to approval of the Department of Labor and Employment. For failing to provide the promised jobs, Pepi was ordered by the court to pay a total of P1. 3 million to the victims and to pay the cost of the litigation. The court had also harsh words for Pepi, not being an ordinary person but a lawyer and an officer of the court. “He should have devoted his life to the promotion and upholding of the law, on the contrary, made use of his position in order to enhance his capacity to recruit illegally the private complainants who are simple folks and most of them not college educated. “The man of law and officer of the court who is supposed to preserve and exact obedience of the law has become the breaker and the shatterer of the law," it said. - GMANews.TV