Police: Firm duped 800 victims of P40M

More than 100 complainants showed up at the Manila City Hall Thursday following the arrest of four employees, including the son of the owners, of a recruitment firm believed to have collected around P40 million in processing fees from victims who were promised nonexistent jobs overseas.

Senior Insp. Rolando Lorenzo Jr., head of the Manila City Hall Public Assistance (Chapa) office which arrested the three suspects in an entrapment operation on Wednesday, said that Marhaba International Management Services Co. (Mimsco) duped around 800 applicants and charged them a minimum of P50,000 each in exchange for work either in Austria or England.

He identified the four as Dennis Abellon, son of MIMSCO owners Conchita Abellon Palisoc and her husband Alfredo Fernandez Palisoc who are also being sought by the police; desk officer Rommel Palmes; secretary Emma Palalon and liaison officer Gemma Palilio. Abellon is Conchita’s son from her first husband.

A check of the company’s website showed that it described itself as “a labor exporter selects only physical & mentally able and component staff/worker (sic).”

It added that “extensive orientations are carried on for their [workers] benefits and travel papers are documented and finally deployed to their work site overseas. However, guarantee for workers are discussed in deployment reservoir of labor experts and in so doing, Marhaba International Management Services Co. is catered (sic).”

“Mimsco as a service contractor / management agency, is in full measure prepared to uphold onto the realization of client’s resolute the probe for the most qualified and effective skills and talents in our workforce (sic),” it went on to say in its website.

The firm also claimed to be “a duly licensed Management Agency by Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) gets a hold with the country’s hundreds of manpower exporters (sic).”

Lorenzo, however, said that the POEA had certified that the agency was operating illegally.

Caselyn Murillo, one of several people from Pangasinan province who were victimized by the recruitment firm, said they each paid a processing fee of P50,000 last year for work as housekeepers in a cruise ship based in Austria.

According to other complainants, the agency was charging a placement fee of P130,000 although they were given the option of giving a down payment of P50,000. The remainder, they said, would be deducted from their salaries after their deployment abroad.

Abellon and the others were arrested after four of their “recruits” who had been waiting for more than a year for the promised jobs became suspicious when they were asked to shell out more money for a medical exam.

They subsequently contacted the police which set up an entrapment operation for the Mimsco workers who now face charges of estafa (large-scale illegal recruitment) and violation of a city ordinance for operating without a permit.