A 36-year-old woman from a southern Cebu town, who is facing 14 counts of large scale estafa, was arrested in a coffee shop in Barangay Kasambagan, Cebu City on Wednesday.
Maria Victoria Torralba of Naga City, Cebu, was served a warrant of arrest by members of the Regional Special Operations Group in Central Visayas (RSOG-7), said Senior Insp. Reslyn Abella of the Police Regional Office in Central Visayas (PRO-7). Abella said that they had 14 warrants of arrest against Torralba.
The police officer said that Torralba’s modus operandi involved convincing her victims to invest in her financing business, where the victims would be promised a 20 percent share of their capital in a month. Two of her victims claimed to have invested an estimated P750,000 to Torralba’s business.
For her part, Torralba told Cebu Daily News in an interview that claim complaints were filed against her because she could no longer give what she promised when her company went bankrupt.
Torralba said that she got an estimated P6 million to P10 million worth of investments from several investors.
Torralba told Cebu Daily News that she promised to return their investments when she would be able to pay them. But Senior Insp. Ricardo Tero of RSOG-7 said that the amount would go to as high as P30 million.
Abella said that the Torralba victims came from Mandaue, Lapu-Lapu and Cebu cities.
Torralba was detained at the PRO-7 detention cell.