Man gets 6 to 30 years for issuing bouncing checks

AFP FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—A man has been sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for defrauding a businessman engaged in buying and selling of foreign currencies by issuing bad checks in amounts totaling P633,050.

Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 18 Judge Carolina Icasiano-Sison convicted Steward Ty, also known as Domingo Valdez, of estafa in a decision promulgated last Monday.

Peter Hung had testified that in August 2002, Ty, a regular buyer, issued three checks as payment for the US and Hong Kong dollars that he bought. But these checks were not honored because the account was closed.

A bank representative testified that Ty kept an account under the name of Domingo Valdez but it was closed due to lack of funds.

In his defense, Ty said that he replaced the postdated checks because Hung allegedly said he didn’t want to wait for four days to encash the checks. Ty said the replacement checks were already encashed but Hung still presented the previous set of checks at the bank.

The court noted, however, that the supposed replacement checks had lower check numbers than the first set and that Hung and Ty had had previous fulfilled transactions.

The court decided that the elements of estafa—lack of funds to cover a check issued in payment of an obligation with damage to the payee—were met, and applied the indeterminate sentence of a minimum of six years to a maximum of 30 years because of the amount involved.

Under the indeterminate sentence law, a convict may apply for release, subject to certain conditions, after serving the minimum sentence.