Cops nab cab-riding robbers in QC

THE POLICE have arrested two men who picked up call center agents working the graveyard shift in a taxi cab and then robbed and molested them.

Superintendent Osmundo de Guzman, the head of the Quezon City Police District Station 9, identified the two men as Almaro Garbo, 37; and Rannie Poe Garbo, 29.

De Guzman said the two men were able to victimize at least five call center agents before they were arrested.

Their last victim said she was robbed by the two men on Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City after she got into their taxi cab at around 8 p.m. on Thursday. She told the police that she lost two cell phones, an undetermined amount of cash and other valuables.

The police said the two men went around in a taxi cab with the name Surongon (TYN 586). One of them would pose as the taxi driver while the other would crouch down on the floor of the front passenger seat.

To hide him from the passenger’s view, the seat would be tilted forward.

“Once the female passenger [got into the taxi cab], the cohort would appear and declare the heist,” De Guzman said in an interview.

Afterward, one of the men would take the victim’s valuables while his cohort would grope her.

The police said the two men were identified after one of their victims texted the taxi cab’s plate number to her boyfriend before she boarded it.

De Guzman told the Inquirer that the robbers would tamper with the taxi cab’s license plate before going out to look for their next victim.

“The suspects would use masking tape to make it appear like a totally different plate number. Sometimes they would change the 8 into 3 or the 6 into 9,” he said.

On Friday evening, a roving police car spotted the taxi cab on Kalayaan Avenue, Quezon City.

The police followed the cab until it pulled into a gasoline station on Mindanao Avenue.

Its occupants were then picked up by the police for questioning. At the police station, the two men were positively identified by some of their victims.