brand-new cars to what turned out to be a bogus rental-car business. Many of the victims are salespeople at Toyota Alabang, since the middle person used by the scammer was also a sales agent at said dealership.
The real scammer has been identified as one Veronica Brequillo, the woman you see in the photo above. The picture was sent to us by John Chua, whose legitimate rental-car business had likewise been victimized by Brequillo. Chua's family owns a rental-car company, and Brequillo had "rented" and disappeared with two of their vehicles--a Toyota Fortuner and a Honda Brio. He personally took the above photo of Brequillo because, according to him, he was already somewhat suspicious of her.
"She looked suspicious because she rented a car on a daily-rate basis instead of monthly," Chua told us.
Chua reached out to us after reading our story on Brequillo and her victims at Toyota Alabang.
The good news is that both the Fortuner and the Brio have been recovered by Chua's company. And that's because both cars had GPS tracking devices on them. The Fortuner had been pawned to a PBA player for P400,000. Chua requested that the player not be named in this article, since the issue had already been resolved between them.
Initially, the PBA player didn't want to give them back the Fortuner even after they talked to him and explained that the car was theirs and that it had been stolen from them. So they took it without the player's knowledge (they had the original key).
"We waited until night to get the car, but he had put a steering-wheel lock on it," Chua shared. "But our driver was able to break the lock."
The PBA player then went to their office to settle the matter. After being shown proper documentation, the PBA player conceded, and he's now looking for Brequillo himself. Technically, the basketball player is now the scam victim here. Chua told us that the player had met Brequillo at the casino.
As for the Brio, Chua said they just took the car after they had tracked it down, without any confrontation with the person it had been pawned to.
Another victim of the scam, Erickson Sufrir, contacted us and gave us a scan of Brequillo's passport (see below). Fortunately for him, his vehicle was returned by the person it had been pawned to. When they reported the incident to the police, they found out that Brequillo has more than a hundred cases of car theft and fraud.
Two lessons, guys: First, it pays to install a GPS tracking device on your vehicle; second, never get a vehicle being pawned by a stranger.
Top photo from John Chua; passport scan from Erickson Sufrir
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