October 2009 - Philippine Supreme Court Decisions/Resolutions
Philippine Supreme Court Jurisprudence
G.R. No. 186101 - Gina A. Domingo v. People of the Philippines
THIRD DIVISION
[G.R. NO. 186101 : October 12, 2009]
GINA A. DOMINGO, Petitioner, v. PEOPLE OF THE PHILIPPINES, Respondent.
D E C I S I O N
VELASCO, JR., J.:
The Case
This is an appeal from the Decision1 dated November 24, 2008 of the Court of Appeals (CA) in CA-G.R. CR No. 31158 entitled People of the Philippines v. Gina A. Domingo, which affirmed the Decision2 dated May 21, 2007 in Criminal Case Nos. Q-98-75971-87 of the Regional Trial Court (RTC), Branch 80 in Quezon City. The RTC convicted petitioner Gina Domingo (petitioner) of 17 counts of Estafa through Falsification of Commercial Document.
The Facts
Private complainant, Remedios D. Perez (Remedios), is a businesswoman and a valued depositor of the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), Aurora Boulevard branch. Petitioner, on the other hand, is a dentist who had a clinic in Remedios' compound.
Being the wife of the best friend of Remedios' son, petitioner had a close relationship with Remedios and her family.
On June 15, 1995, Remedios accompanied petitioner to BPI because the latter wanted to open an account therein. Remedios then introduced petitioner to the bank's staff and officers. Soon thereafter, petitioner frequented Remedios' office and volunteered to deposit her checks in her bank account at BPI.
Sometime in October 1996, Remedios wanted to buy a car thinking that she already had a substantial amount in her account. Thus, she went to BPI to withdraw two hundred thousand pesos (PhP 200,000). To her surprise, however, she found out that her money had already been withdrawn. The withdrawals were effected through 18 encashment slips bearing her forged signatures reaching the amount of eight hundred thirty-eight thousand pesos (PhP 838,000). She denied having affixed her signatures on the encashment slips used.
Testimonies showed that on several occasions beginning September 18, 1995 until October 18, 1996, petitioner presented a number of encashment slips of various amounts to BPI, and by virtue of which she was able to withdraw huge amounts of money from the checking account of the complainant. She deposited the bigger portion of these amounts to her own account and pocketed some of them, while also paying the rest to Skycable. The transactions were processed by four tellers of BPI, namely: Regina Ramos, Mary Antonette Pozon, Sheila Ferranco, and Kim Rillo who verified the signatures of the complainant on the questioned encashment slips.
As synthesized by the trial court, the transactions are as follows:
Date of encashment slip
Amount withdrawn via encashment slip
Amount deposited to accused's account
Amount paid to Skycable (PS) or Pocketed (Po) by the accused
Name of Teller who processed the transaction
1. Sept. 8, 1995
P10,000.00
P8,000.00
P2,000.00 (Po)
Regina Ramos
2. Sept. 18, 1995
30,000.00
20,000.00
10,000.00 (Po)