‘Dugo-dugo’ gang dupes teenage girl

The San Juan City police are looking for members of a “dugo-dugo” gang who duped a 13-year-old girl into giving her parent’s jewelry to a woman at a mall in Manila.

San Juan City police investigator SPO2 Erickson Buted said on Monday that they were looking for more witnesses and examining closed-circuit television camera footage to come up with an accurate description of the woman.

Same old scam

Dugo-dugo is a modus operandi in which con artists call up a house and inform the person there, usually the maid, that their employer has figured in an accident and needs money to pay the hospital bills.

The maid is urged to gather her employer’s cash or other valuables, bring it to a location named by the caller and turn the valuables over to a certain person.

This time, however, the victim was the homeowners’ daughter.

Based on a report submitted to San Juan City police chief, Senior Supt. Chito Bersaluna, Jenny (name changed to protect the victim) was alone in the family’s house at Barangay Maytunas on March 8 when a woman caller said that her mother was being held by Manila policemen for hitting a child with their car.

Caller’s instructions

The still unidentified woman told the 13-year-old girl to get her parents’ jewelry because her mother needed money, bring the jewelry to a mall in Manila and turn it over to a woman.

The police have yet to estimate the value of the stolen jewelry as Jenny was too traumatized to talk to them.