NBI collars ‘nurse’ for online selling scam

Raymond Lequin is in pensive mood inside the detention cell of the NBI-7. (CDN PHOTO/VINCENT ADOR S. MAYOL)

Clad in white nurse’s uniform and wearing a pair of white shoes, Raymond Lequin, 31, would frequent hospitals in Cebu City. But Lequin is not a nurse though he posed as one to dupe several people through online classified ads.

Last Thursday, agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) arrested Lequin in an entrapment operation inside the Visayas Community Medical Center in uptown Cebu City past 5 p.m. after he  took the cellphone of a poseur-buyer without paying for it.

According to NBI assistant regional director Dominador Cimafranca, they received complaints from people who claimed to have been duped by Lequin.

Cimafranca said Lequin duped several people inside the Visayas Community Medical Center, Chong Hua Hospital, Velez Hospital, Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, and Perpetual Succour Hospital.

So far, at least 10 persons have lodged complaints against Lequin before the NBI 7.

“This man (Lequin) has been an impostor in a nurse’s garb. Hospital guards were not aware of what he’s doing because they thought he’s an employee of the hospital, having been wearing clinical uniforms,” Cimafranca said.

He said Lequin’s “modus operandi” was to meet the person whom he transacted with through online classified ads.

While they are inside the hospital, Lequin would inform the seller that he’s going to bring the item inside the emergency room to test it.

“However, he will never return to pay for the item he got. Instead, he will leave the hospital using the exit door of the emergency room,” Cimafranca said.

Lequin admitted the accusations levelled against him.

“I don’t have any work since August  and we have a problem in the family. So I decided to do this,” he said in Cebuano.