S1L27 – The 3 D’s in Estafa: Deceit, Damage and Discovery, feat. Mommy Dionisia
In Baguio City, law classes meet in the evening, from 5:30 to 8:30 pm although I once famously “punished” a class by lecturing until 11:00 PM.
Evening classes favored working students. I had quite a few fulltime professionals, some even older than me—which says a lot considering I am older than the building.
My oldest student is a woman, she is 59 in her junior year as a law student, old enough to be mother to Deema, Kata, Juan and Jack—old enough to be the mother of the whole class. They all call her “Mommy Dionisia” just because of her uncanny resemblance to Manny Pacquiao’s overflirty mom. But the similarity ends there, she is a gentle, dignified softspoken lady with a kind spirit.
“Mommy Dionisia, may I ask you to stand up, please?”
“Of course, Prof! Fire away! Grill me! Grill me like you grill the others!” the sweet old lady said, sounding like a ham sandwich. She calls me ‘Prof’ because I forbade her from calling me ‘Sir.’
“Facts,” I started, “A well-dressed lady walks into a really expensive restaurant, orders the most expensive entreé on the menu, and the most expensive wine on the winelist and then after dining, she walks out of the restaurant without paying. What crime did she commit?”
Somebody blurted out, “Impersonating a NEA appointee sir!” the whole class burst out laughing.
“Deemaaa! Why do you always do that?! I didn’t call you to recite…” I scolded the darling of the class.
“I’m sorry, sir, I couldn’t help it with those set of facts, they fit so perfectly!”
“Yeah, well, from now on let’s try to limit incidents like this to a maximum of NONE!” I barked.
“Yes, sir!”
“May I go back to you, Mommy Dionisia, forgive Miss Deema there, her mouth was born ahead of its time,” again the whole class burst out laughing, Deema is back to her eyerolling ways—and now even Mommy Dionisia, the paragon of demurre, is laughing too.
“The same facts,” I refocused, “what crime was committed?”
“I was going to say estafa, Prof, but I think I like Deema’s answer better!”
“You are correct, nevertheless. Listen, class. Estafa or Swindling is not so much a crime as it is an END RESULT. It’s what you do to achieve that result that is really the crime. So you can have estafa through falsification, estafa through misrepresentation, estafa through alteration, etc. I’m trying to think of a more common analogy…”
“Let me try, Prof,” Mommy Dionisia said.
“This I want to hear. Go ahead po,” I said.
“It’s like GINISA is not really a recipé but it’s the common denominator of a hundred wonderful dishes: ginisang baboy, ginisang sitaw, ginisang mushrooms, but my favorite is Atty. Dizon’s specialty: ginisang law student!”
That everybody laughed told me they know the dish very well. “That’s an excellent analogy, Mommy Dionisia, you may please sit down.”
“What I like about Mommy Dionisia’s example, class, is that it alerts you to the fact that estafa can wear a million different faces. So it’s fruitless to aspire to be an estafa specialist and try to catalogue every kind of estafa there is. What I’d like you to acquire tonight is the skill to recognize estafa in WHATEVER form it comes.”
When I start to space my jokes a little farther apart, my students usually take it as a sign to start taking down notes, “Siryoso na si sir ..!”
“Oo nga eh, boring na sjya..!”
“I heard that, Deema!” I said, momentarily breaking up the class in laughter, before I went back to serious business.
“Be on the lookout for three D’s, class—DECEIT, DAMAGE and DISCOVERY. All estafa will involve some form of abuse of confidence, fraud or deception. That’s your first “D.”
“Estafa is never a victimless crime. Somebody is always going to get hurt. Somebody is always going to lose money, property, goodwill. In other words, there is always DAMAGE. That’s your second ‘D.’ Some books talk about a stray “D” for DEGREE. If you own one of those books, I want you to burn it. Any idea why?”
“Sir, may I answer that because, uh..you know..my name starts with ‘D!”
“You are insufferable, Deema, but go ahead.”
“Degree is immaterial because whether you cheated somebody for a hundred pesos or a hundred million, the crime is still estafa. All that changes is the penalty and, of course, the filing fee for the civil aspect.”
“Well as long as you’re on a roll there, Miss Deema, why don’t you give your classmates a really exotic example of grand estafa—one they haven’t encountered yet.”
“Gladly, sir. This woman named Mariribuk…”
“That not her real name I hope…” I interrupted.
“No, sir. Of course not. Anyway Mariribuk is a dormant lawyer…”
“A WHAT??”
“A dormant lawyer, sir, like a dormant volcano? It looks like a volcano but it hasn’t erupted for centuries. Anyway, she claims she was appointed general manager of a cable company with 50,000 subscribers but she was appointed by the NTC…”
“By WHO??”
“By the NTC sir, she has a Board Resolution from the NTC Board of Commissioners…”
“Wait, Miss Deema, let me interrupt you for a moment there. The NTC is a government regulatory agency. Since when did the NTC start appointing general managers of private cable companies?”
“Since NEVER, sir. But a lot of people do not know that. Mariribuk tells them she is the legitimate GM, she even showed up at the cable company’s office but of course they didn’t let her in. They chased her out of the yard.” Said Deema.
“Did they? Well, I can’t say I blame them. What would she know about the cable business? You said she was a volcano?”
“A dormant lawyer, sir…”
“Right, right—dormant lawyer. So what makes her think she qualifies to manage a cable company?”
“She owns a TV, sir.”
“Yeah, well so does Brosia our housemaid, She recently bought a really big one with my credit card…!”
“Can I continue now, sir? Mariribuk went around asking banks if the cable company has an account with them. Then she posted tarps that read ‘cable payments accepted here’ and waited for people to pay their cable bills in these bootleg collection centers, sir.” Deema said.
“WHERE did she place these tarps?”
“Well, the banks wouldn’t let her post in their offices, so she just posted them in streetcorner sari-sari stores, sidewalk barbecue stands and some even in the ladies’ room.”
“Alright, those are enough facts for me to call somebody else. Mr. Dimacaawat, take over from Miss Deema.”
“Sir, Deema is reciting the 2021 case of NEA versus BENE—” i
“Never mind the case docket number.”
“Yes, sir. Well, Mariribuk misrepresented herself as GM of the cable company contrary to the fact. This led many subscribers to believe the misrepresentation, being actively deceived by Mariribuk. So several of them paid their bills to her, not knowing they were not satisfying their obligation to the cable company. The cable company continues to provide service but are not receiving the payments from these subscribers.”
“So who are the parties who suffered the damage, Juan?”
“Sir, the cable company and several cable subscribers, whose identities are not yet known because Mariribuk keeps no record and remits nothing to the cable company.”
“Which explains what, Mr. Dimacaawat?”
“Which explains why the crime of estafa could not yet be filed by the cable company’s lawyers.”
“Because…?”
“Sir, because the lawyers still have to make a collection delinquency and deficiency study, identify the specific subscribers who were defrauded and the total value of the damage sustained by both the cable company and the subscribers.”
“And that brings us to what Deema?”
“That brings us, I think, to the Third ‘D’ sir, which is DISCOVERY. All these data must be determined or discovered first to complete the corpus delicti, or the body of the crime.”
I can’t speak enough of the pride that a law professor feels when your students recite this well. It makes you wish you were a better teacher because students like Deema, Juan and Mommy Dionisia certainly deserve one. That term—dormant lawyer—oooh, that must sting for some.
“She’s a dangerous walking timebomb, sir,” Deema added.
“Who? The dormant lawyer? Why do you say that?” I asked.
“I didn’t say it, sir. The UP Department of Psychology were the ones who said it They said Mariribuk can explode anytime.”
The author is a writer and lawyer based in Baguio City, Philippines. Former editor of the Gold Ore and Baguio City Digest, professor of journalism, political science and law at Baguio Colleges Foundation (BCF). He is a photographer and video documentarist. He has a YouTube channel called “Parables and Reason”