5 people sentenced for selling ecstasy in deadly 2016 Pasay rave

A Parañaque court has sentenced five people believed to be among those who sold ecstasy during at the Forever Summer rave in Pasay City in 2016 where five attendees died.

According to a report on GMA News TV's Balitanghali on Friday, Judge  Judge Danilo Suarez of the Parañaque Regional Trial Court Branch 259 has sentenced suspects Seergeoh Villanueva and Marc Deen to life imprisonment.

The two suspects were arrested 2016 in a buy-bust operation conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).

The rest of the accused, namely Ericka Valbuena, Tomas Lee Martin Halili, Martin Angelo Dimacali, have been sentenced to jail time of 20 years.

The three were nabbed by NBI operatives in a Parañaque City condominium unit where authorities were able to seize a supply of several types of illegal drugs and paraphernalia.

The condominium unit at Azure Urban Resort Residences was believed to be the "laboratory" of their alleged business of selling illegal drugs.

Suarez ordered the immediate transfer of four of the accused to the New Bilibid Prison while Valbuena was sent to a women's correctional facility.

Deen and Villanueva were each ordered to pay a P5 million fine while the fine for rest of the accused was valued at P500,000 each.

Autopsy reports have revealed that some of the five fatalities in the 2016 concert died of due to massive heart attack, which is an indicator of drug overdose.

The NBI had profiled all the suspects to be from "well-off" families and as having celebrities and prominent personalities as their clients. —Margaret Claire Layug/JST, GMA News