Mandaluyong cops nab rob gang’s ‘Madam’ financier

The Mandaluyong police finally caught up with “Madam,” one of the two alleged financiers of a notorious robbery group formed seven years ago.

Rosario Domingo, 48, who police said was given the moniker by members of the Añover-Abraham gang, was arrested at 5 a.m. yesterday on charges of illegal possession of firearms and drugs at her Sta. Ana, Manila, residence.

Her live-in partner and fellow suspect, Bernardo Mallari, eluded arrest by jumping off the roof, according to Senior Police Officer 2 Disilito Custodio, the case investigator who was with the police team that served the warrants.

During questioning, Domingo maintained that it was only her live-in partner who financed robbery-holdup activities, but admitted being a drug pusher in the past.

The police said Mallari formed the gang years ago and ran its operations along with Domingo. The pair allegedly provided the gang members with motorcycles, guns and drugs and was responsible for dividing up the loot.

Inspector Herculano Mago, head of the Mandaluyong police investigation unit, said Domingo’s role in the group was revealed by a gang member who became a police informant.

According to the tipster, the gang often worked in pairs, cruising on motorcycles to look for potential victims and sometimes staging robberies in passenger buses. The group counted as many as 20 members, mostly from the Añover and Abraham clans who are related to each other.

Mago, who studied the group’s operations for a month, said Mallari started out stealing vehicles or firearms usually from security guards.

When Mallari had collected enough guns and vehicles, he and Domingo recruited people to form a robbery group, the officer said.

“They would give (their henchmen) a motorcycle and a gun and make them use drugs so they would get ‘high’ and be bold enough to do a hit,”  Mago said.

Custodio linked the group to at least four robberies, including one that killed a University of the Philippines student in December last year and another staged on a bus on Edsa that left one passenger dead.

After a successful operation, Domingo and Mallari would meet with the group to divide the loot, Mago said.

Domingo’s Sta. Ana house yielded a fragmentation grenade, several firearms, ammunition for .38-cal. and .45-cal. pistols, and a motorcycle apparently used by the group in their illegal activities, the officer added.

Senior Police Officer 2 Jun Esperanzate, officer in charge of the Mandaluyong antinarcotics unit, said a sachet of suspected “shabu” was also found in the house.