A foolish robbery

Whoever coined the saying, “Lightning never strikes the same place twice,” must be listening closely to Lapu-Lapu City Police Office Director Supt. Anthony Obenza’s reaction to the heist staged by five men who robbed managers of the M. Lhuillier pawnshop chain last Wednesday.

Two M. Lhullier executives arrived half past ten from Davao City to deliver jewelry worth at least P2 million to the company’s main office in Cebu City. Upon arrival at the Mactan Cebu International Airport, the managers rode an airport taxicab, but at the junction of the Airport Road and M.L. Quezon Avenue going to Mandaue City, they were waylaid by armed thieves posing as members of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency. The robbers ran away with two backpacks containing jewelry, which were placed in the trunk of the cab.

By now Obenza is familiar with the way the heist was staged. In early April 2011, eight managers of the same pawnshop chain from Ozamiz and Cagayan de Oro cities arrived in Cebu to attend a company conference and deliver caches of jewelry. They all rode a company car, but while travelling through Lapu-Lapu to Cebu City they were robbed by armed men also posing as anti-narcotics agents. The thieves carted away jewelry worth P5 million. Obenza described the crime as cool and calculated. He aired suspicion that it was an inside job. He didn’t discount the possibility that a criminal syndicate based outside Cebu was behind the holdup.

The inside job theory amounts to flinging mud at the company because it assumes the firm organized the crime in order to collect insurance money. With all its resources, I wonder why M. Lhuillier has not filed administrative or criminal cases against Obenza for statements that vilify the company.

Normally, police officials are very cautious when making statements about crimes committed within their jurisdiction because of the obvious need to process the statements of the victims and witnesses and evidence gathered from the crime scene. However, in less than four hours after the heist, Obenza was already making statements that mocked the style of the robbery.

In an interview with Dennes Tabar over the Cebu Catholic Television Network, Obenza said the modus in the April and Oct. 3 crimes were almost identical, that as far as he was concerned, what happened was just “drama” or “scenario,” as he called it.

Obenza recalled that after the April 2011 heist, the police and the pawnshop chain agreed that the company would notify them if company employees would transport jewelry again to Cebu passing through the Mactan airport. Had the protocol been observed, the police official said, he could have mobilized a battalion to escort the employees carrying the valuables to their destination. For Obenza, police assistance was just a call away but the company did not bother taking the necessary precautions.

He also found it mysterious that the victims simply stashed the backpacks containing jewelry in the trunk of the car, instead of guarding it with their lives, so to speak. I heard Tabar saying that M. Lhuillier officials should have held the backpacks closely in their arms and should not have let their eyes wander from the valuables. I agree. My grandmother used to hide her insignificant jewels right in the space between her breasts, known to be the safest place to hide one’s money or gold, in the old days at least.

Finally, Obenza highlighted his suspicion by directing public attention to the speed with which company lawyers went to the police office to assist the victims. According to the police official, the lawyers arrived 10 minutes after the police rounded up the victims and the taxicab driver.

Obenza is a veteran cop with a nose that can smell when something is off even from a mile. For him, the circumstances of the two crimes look too pat. He called the first robbery “foolishness” and the recent one “dakung binuang (grand foolishness).” He assured Lapu-Lapu Mayor Paz Radaza that essentially no crime was committed in their turf.

Obenza’s theory is something to think about because he is a hard-boiled investigator. Still, it would amount to pure conjecture minus hard and solid evidence. I hope his views do not mean he will stop investigating these cases. As a matter of fact, because he believes it was an inside job, it now becomes necessary for him to validate his assumption by taking the lead in the investigation.