Air ticket to Cebu blows gang’s cover

A father, his son, and son’s girlfriend were arrested last Sunday night at the Mactan airport after they were accused of credit card fraud.

Nestor Eugenio and his son Daniel of Minglanilla town were fetching Daniel’s girlfriend, Rhea Santiago when they were arrested.

Police, airport authorities and the Tiger Airways officials worked together to arrest the suspects.

Santiago was identified as the person who used an airline ticket purchased using a tampered credit card of lawyer Al Metila Lagahit.

Police found out that somebody purchased a Tiger Airways ticket for a flight from Manila to Cebu last Sunday using Lagahit’s credit card.

The police moved in after the Eugenios, who are from Minglanilla town in southern Cebu and Santiago got together at the airport.

Police claimed that Eugenio later admitted that he was the one who bought the ticket and gave it to his son, who in turn gave it to Santiago, who is from Paranaque City, for her trip to Cebu.

Police said they believed it wasn’t Nestor who tampered with te Lagahit’s credit card but someone else and Nestor only used it.

Police said they were investigating the identity of the suspect.

Police probe

Investigation showed that Lagahit found out last Feb. 20 that he had been billed by Banco de Oro for  credit card transactions that he didn’t authorize. Lagahit is a BDO Gold Master credit cardholder.

The transactions involved the purchase of two plane tickets. The first was a Feb. 3 Cebu Pacific Pasig Branch transaction involving P6,102 and the second a Tiger Airways plane ticket  P3,415.

Lagahit, then went to bank to complain and requested the bank to block or cancel his credit card account to prevent its use in future transactions.

He then reported the incident to the police who coordinated with the bank, the airlines involved and the airport authorities to arrest the suspects.

The suspects were detained at the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Central Visayas detention cell at Camp Sotero Cabahug in Cebu City pending the filing of charges.

Insp. Delfin Bontuyan, team leader of the operation, said that the suspects would face charges for violating Republic Act 8484 or the Access Devices Regulation Act.