Noel Maricuelo
Agents of the National Bureau of Investigation in Central Visayas (NBI-7) arrested a man who pretended to be a lawyer and represented a client in court.
Noel Maricuelo, 47, was caught after he received P15,000, the second payment from the complainant, in an entrapment operation inside a mall in Consolacion town, 13 kilometers north of Cebu City, past 5 p.m. on Tuesday.
NBI-7 Special Investigator Agapito Gierran said Maricuelo duped Kirby Magdadaro, a master mariner, who had previously paid the suspect P20,000 as lawyer’s fee.
The complainant said Maricuelo, a tenant in his apartment in Liloan, volunteered to be his lawyer in an ejectment case against an occupant of one of Magdadaro’s properties.
The Municipal Circuit Trial Court of Compostela and Liloan towns, however, dismissed the case last February 2017.
Magdadaro said that when he asked Maricuelo why they lost, the latter accused the judge of being biased. Unconvinced, Magdadaro consulted a lawyer-friend who, upon perusing the documents and pleadings filed by Maricuelo, noted they had several defects.
Suspecting that Maricuelo was not a laywer, Magdadaro sought help from the NBI, which, in turn, found out that Maricuelo’s name was not in the official Roll of Attorneys.
The lawyer’s identification number used by Maricuelo also belonged to another lawyer, said Gierran.
The NBI hatched an entrapment operation and arrested Maricuelo after he received the P15,000 he asked from Magdadaro.
Maricuelo, meanwhile, insisted he never claimed to be a lawyer and was just set up by the complainant. He claimed it was Magdadaro who allegedly wrote his own pleadings.
He also claimed that the money he received from Magdadaro was just meant to thank him for helping the latter.
The NBI was unconvinced and would file estafa and falsification of documents charges against Maricuelo at the Cebu Provincial Prosecutor’s Office.
Gierran urged other people who might have been victimized by Maricuelo to visit the NBI office and file charges against the suspect who is now detained at the bureau’s stockade.