Woman dupes 9 Japanese nationals in gold bar scam

A woman named Marlene Buenaventura is now facing charges for estafa or swindling after she allegedly duped Japanese nationals into shelling out money to buy gold bars.

“Buenaventura — who was arrested in a sting at a hotel in Makati City last Fri, Dec 2 — was caught following a tip from a Japanese national, who asked not to be named,” reports  Ghio Ong in The Philippine Star.

Atty. Martini Cruz — executive officer of the National Bureau of Investigation’s Anti-Organized and Transnational Crime Division — revealed that the Japanese national had asked help from the agency after Buenaventura asked for an additional PHP3.3 million on Oct 29. She claimed that she would use the money to allegedly “bribe Bureau of Customs personnel to release the gold bars.”

Buenaventura had claimed that the gold bars would be coming from Malaysia or Singapore.

At that point, though, the Japanese national had already paid Buenaventura around 50 million yen or PHP22 million for the gold bars. However, she told the Japanese national that his previous payment had been forfeited.

The NBI discovered that Buenaventura had victimized nine Japanese citizens. However, she still insisted that she “had two legitimate transactions and the rest is already bogus.”



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