Nine complainants against Organico show up at CIDG-7 office

Members from the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) in Region 7 raid the Organico office in Barangay Kasambagan, Cebu City on Tuesday morning, June 11, 2019. CDN Digital photo | CDN Digital file photo – Gerard Vincent Francisco

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Victims of Organico Agribusiness Ventures Corp.’s investment scam have started to show up at the office of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in Central Visayas (CIDG-7) to file their complaint against the investment company.

Police Major Allan Tolosa, CIDG-7 deputy regional chief, said two victims had already submitted their complete documents for the complaint of estafa to be filed by the CIDG-7 at the Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office.

However, Tolosa said seven other victims, who had recently come to the office to file their complaints against Organico, had yet to submit complete documents to support their complaint.

He said that these brought the complainants against the investment firm to nine people with seven of them still lacking documents to support their complaint.

That is the reason the CIDG-7 planned to file the complaint next week at the earliest to give time for the seven victims to submit the needed documents.

Tolosa also said that this would be the first complaint to be filed by the victims against Organico since the firm’s offices were raided five months ago after President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the shut down of companies involved in investment scams.

Read more: CIDG-7 implements crackdown on investment scams; raids Cebu offices of Organico and ADA

He said he was also encouraging other victims to come forward and file their complaints at the CIDG-7 office so that they could include these in the complaint they would file against Organico at the Cebu City Prosecutor’s Office.

One of the seven victims, who recently visited the CIDG-7 office, was a 39-year-old female medical practitioner, who asked not to be named.

She said she was filing the complaint on behalf of her five other family members, who were duped by Organico.

She said that the family had invested at least P700,000 to the company.

“Mo file mig complaint kay ganahan mi mabalik among kwarta kay dili baya lalim ni hatag mig investment unya giilad rami,” she said.

(We filed the complaint because we wanted to get our money back. It is hard to accept investing our money and only to learn in the end that we were duped.)

She said that it took them until today to file the complaint because the company had promised to return their money.

However, until now, she said they had not yet gotten back the money they invested to the company.

Organico Agribusiness Ventures Corp. is an investment company that promised members a 30 percent return of investments, claiming that the money they invested would be used to grow hogs and poultry, which allegedly did not exist.

The CIDG-7 raided Organico’s offices in Cebu City last June 11 after President Rodrigo Duterte ordered to close down agencies involved in investment scams.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier revealed that Organico was not authorized to accept investments even though it was registered with them./dbs