Charge against consultancy firm dismissed
THE charge of syndicated and large-scale illegal recruitment filed against the officials and staffers of a consultancy center has been dismissed. But in a resolution issued last week, Makati City Assistant Prosecutor Joel Vedan recommended the filing of four counts of estafa against Philip Leonard and his wife, Bernalyn, the owners of International Student Advisors 4U Inc. (ISA), after they failed to comply with their obligations to four of the 19 complainants who filed the case against them. ISA lawyer Shiela San Diego, meanwhile, said they would file a motion for reconsideration. ISA’s office at the Mavenue Building on Guerrero Street in Makati City was raided last year by members of the Anti-Transnational Crime Division of the Philippine National Police-Criminal Investigation and Detection Group after 19 job seekers, mostly nurses, complained that the firm defrauded them of P300,000 each in exchange for high-paying jobs in the United Kingdom. Vedan, however, said in his resolution that the center had issued receipts to show the payments made by applicants were used for tuition and processing fees. Under its Securities and Exchange Commission registration, ISA is limited to providing advisory and marketing consultancy services for training college and university courses in foreign countries. The complainants, however, alleged that “ISA engaged in recruitment activities under the guise of consultancy services.” In his resolution, Vedan said there was no proof that the center promised complainants high-paying jobs in the UK.—Penelope P. Endozo
Call center agent’s condo unit burglarized
THIEVES broke into the condominium unit of a call-center agent in Quezon City, taking everything but the proverbial “kitchen sink,” a police report said Sunday. Police Officer 2 Manny Aquino of the Quezon City Police District Station 3 said Ron Dimacali, 41, a resident of Espacio Bernardo Condominium on Champaca Street, Novaliches, discovered the burglary on Saturday morning after he came home from work. He said he lost a flat screen television worth P30,000, two laptop computers worth P65,000, an iPod, rice cooker, coffee maker, groceries and clothes.—Nancy C. Carvajal