Appellate court reduces jail term of ‘pyramid scam queen’

The Court of Appeals has reduced the jail term that a Makati City Regional Trial Court handed down in 2009 on Rosario Baladjay, the so-called “pyramid scam queen” who swindled close to a million individuals of several billions of pesos in spurious investments.

The appellate court lowered the sentence from life imprisonment to 20 years, as it modified the guilty verdict on Baladjay in connection with one of the several estafa cases filed against her.

“(S)ince the penalty prescribed by law is prision correccional maximum to prision mayor minimum, the penalty … (should) be prision correccional in its minimum to medium periods,” the court said in a 21-page ruling.

“The judgment of conviction … is affirmed with modification in that the minimum term of the indeterminate sentence to be imposed should be four years and two months of prision correccional as minimum to 20 years of reclusion temporal as maximum,” it added.

The resolution was written by Associate Justice Japar Dimaampao, with the concurrence of Associate Justices Michael Elbinias and Socorro Inting.

The Makati RTC  had also found Baladjay’s associate Robella de Guzman guilty of estafa for duping complainant Christine Yu of some P4 million in investments.

Another accused, Rosalina Borja, was cleared of the charges by the lower court for lack of evidence.

The National Bureau of Investigation said Yu was one of the more than 950,000 individuals who placed their money in Baladjay’s Multitel Group of Companies.

In a racket also known as the Ponzi scheme, Baladjay and her cohorts enticed their victims with prospects of easy riches if they would “recruit” more investors down the line.

Their victims eventually included celebrities, governments officials and senior police and military officers.