MANILA – At first glance, it had all the ingredients that went into the making of a story that deserved to be published in major newspapers as well as covered live over radio and TV.
In fact, this is what happened when one of the country’s leading newspapers even found it worthwhile to have the story published on page 1 as a boxed item reserved only for meritorious human interest stories.
But later events proved it was not that way.
It all started when a 24-year-old man, who identified himself as Nathan Santos Smith, appeared at the police station late Monday night in the Cubao district of suburban Quezon City, Metro Manila, to complain he was victimized by a taxi driver.
Smith said he was a Filipino-American, a resident of the posh Beverly Hills district in Los Angeles, who was taking up law at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts and was visiting the Philippines for the first time to attend the wedding of a cousin in Baguio City in the Northern Luzon highlands.
Smith complained that a taxi driver, who picked him up at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport upon his arrival from the US had robbed him of $7,000 in cash and other valuables, including a laptop, totalling about $10,000.
According to the police, Smith talked straight English while recounting his travails at the hands of the taxi driver whom he asked to bring him to the nearest bus station that would take him to Baguio City in time for his cousin’s wedding.
Instead of bringing him to the bus station, Smith said the driver took him to a secluded spot in Cubao where he and an unknown accomplice robbed him of his money and the laptop.
Based on Smith’s description and the plate number of the taxicab, police immediately arrested the driver and impounded the vehicle, despite the driver’s protestations of his innocence, which was backed up by his employer of five years, who testified to his honesty.
Taking pity on him, the police station commander said he even loaned Smith the equivalent of $50 from his own pocket for his bus fare to Baguio to enable him to attend his cousin’s wedding.
But the commander and his men said they started doubting Smith’s story when they checked with the record of immigration arrivals at the airport on that day. They said they discovered there was no passenger by that name.
Morever, police said they also discovered that the address given by Smith in Baguio was that of a school’s and not his relatives.
When confronted with the findings, police admitted he made up the whole story and that his real name was Richard Sangalang, who left his hometown of /Capas in Tarlac province in Central Luzon six years ago.
Police said Sangalang was forced to leave Capas when he was disowned by his family for stealing money and valuables from his parents.
Since then, Sangalang started moving from one place to another, gaining the sympathy and pity of households and shop owners, in most cases in canteens where he would stay for a while before leaving again to find another host, police said.
During the interrogation, police said Sangalang admitted he did not even know where Harvard University was located.
But more than that, investigators said that when asked why he picked on their station commander as his victim, Sangalang answered in the Filipino language: “Police are helpful and easy to talk to.”
He also said he was sorry for what he did but the police and the driver, who was only set free after Smith admitted his crime, said they would throw the book at him for charges like perjury, using a fictitious name, fraud and estafa.
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