Ex-PDEA agent arrested for selling illegal drugs

Former PDEA agent, Moises Arriesgado, whom police described as the number 1 drug personality in Barangay Pardo, was arrested following a buy-bust operation conducted by the Philippine National Police (CDN PHOTO/JUNJIE MENDOZA).

A former agent of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency in Central Visayas (PDEA-7) was arrested in a police buy-bust operation in Barangay Calamba, Cebu City.

The operation was hatched after police discovered text messages between the ex-PDEA agent and an arrested drug suspect.

The former PDEA agent was identified as Moises Arriesgado, 42, who also happened to be number one on the drugs watch list of the Pardo Police Station.

Text messages from Arriesgado to Mark Anthony Abay, a drug suspect earlier arrested in a police checkpoint for alleged possession of eight grams of shabu, led to Arriesgado’s arrest.

Senior Insp. Robert Lucernas, chief of the Pardo Police Station, said Abay had transacted with Arriesgado for a supply of drugs based on their exchange of text messages.

“When we knew that Abay has a contact with Arriesgado, we immediately hatched a buy-bust operation. Fortunately, we were able to get him,” he said.

Arriesgado was arrested after he allegedly sold a pack of shabu to an undercover policeman in Barangay Calamba, Thursday afternoon.

Interviewed at the Pardo Police Station where he is currently detained pending the filing of formal charges against him, Arriesgado denied peddling drugs although, he said, he has been using shabu to fight depression after he was dismissed from PDEA in 2013.

“Og namaligya pa ko og drogas, nakapondar na unta ko og balay. Bisan naman lang gani og TV, wala man gani ko makapalit para unta sa akong mga anak. (If I were selling illegal drugs, I would already have my own house by now. I could not even buy a television for my kids),” he said.

But police said it was Arriesgado who led them to Jesryl Bacalla, a suspected member of the Kerwin Espinosa drug group who was arrested with his wife in another operation last Thursday.

Police recovered an estimated P5.9 million worth of shabu in the operation against Bacalla, an alleged drug dealer who used to operate in Leyte before moving back to Cebu to evade arrest in that province.

“These three suspects (Abay, Arriesgado, and Bacalla) are actually connected to each other in the illegal drugs trade,” the police chief said.

Arriesgado said he had gone on absent without official leave (Awol) from PDEA after he was reassigned to Zamboanga City in 2013.

He was eventually dropped from the rolls.

“It was then that I started using shabu. I may be a drug dependent but I was never into selling shabu,” Arriesgado said in Cebuano.