MANILA - A woman has been indicted for computer fraud in the
first such case under the Philippines' controversial cybercrime law,
justice department records showed Sunday.
The Department
of Justice, through the Las Piñas City Prosecutor, has filed its first
case under the
Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
City
Prosecutor Marylin Cynthia Luang recommended two counts of
computer-related forgery to be filed against a certain Karla Martinez
Ignacio.
The
Philippine National Bank, as a complainant, discovered nine
unauthorized transactions – two of which involved remittances made by
Ignacio using her ATM card.
PNB
Guam Branch Manager Serafin Agdagdag reported the unauthorized
transactions, after he found out his user ID was used to transact the
said remittances.
The
bank after being informed that Ignacio would withdraw the remaining
balance from her account sought the help of the Philippine National
Police (PNP).
Ignacio allegedly used the computer-contrived data to withdraw from
the PNB’s branch in Barangay Almanza, Las Pinas part of a total
P1,373,053 deposited in her savings account and another account in the
name of Ostrich Business Services, which she owns.
The fraudulent transactions started when the PNB branch in Guam
informed the head office of the questionable transactions, triggering an
internal probe.
In the course of the investigation, the PNB discovered several
unauthorized transactions, including the purported remittance of P1.2
million by one Sunny Pulan Juan to Ostrich Business Services, and
another one for P173,053 made by Gretchen Quilit Andres to the same
branch in Almanza, and credited also to an account of Ostrich Business
Services.
The bank discovered that Ignacio managed to withdraw P150, 000 from
these supposed deposits. She was unable to withdraw the rest of the
amount after the bank noticed the fraud.
The prosecutor’s resolution said “there was enough evidence to show
fraudulent transactions, especially since no deposit of money were made
at PNB Guam and that there was an illegal or unauthorized access to the
computer of the said bank branch which allowed the inputting of
inauthentic computer computed data by the remitters (Sunny Pulan Juan
and Gretchen Quilit Andres) whose real identities and whereabouts are
still unknown.”
Using such “inauthentic data,” Ignacio went to the bank branch in
Almanza to withdraw the amount on May 16 and that she went again last
May 22 to withdraw the remainder of the account but was unsuccessful
after the bank reversed the amount, prosecutors said.
“She knowingly used the said inauthentic data to with intent to gain
and with intent to cause damage to the bank. She probably knew that the
money credited to her accounts are results of illegal access to the
computer system of the PNB,” the resolution said.
The respondent was arrested inside the premises of PNP Almanza Branch in Las Piñas.
Under
the Cybercrime Prevention Act, computer-related forgery covers the act
of knowingly using computer data for perpetuating a fraudulent design.
The
case is the first reported under the
Cybercrime Prevention Act after
the Supreme Court's decision upholding the law's constitutionality.
Karla Martinez Ignacio could face up to six years in jail if found
guilty of transferring thousands of dollars to her bank account using
fraudulent computer data.
She was indicted by a prosecutor in the city of Las Pinas, outside
Manila, and is set to be charged under the
Philippines' Cybercrime Prevention Act.
The law is designed to stamp out online scourges like fraud, identity
theft and child pornography, but critics say it could be used to stifle
dissent as it imposes heavy prison terms for online libel.
Facebook and Twitter have become popular ways of organising major political street protests in the Philippines.
The law was passed in 2012 but its implementation was suspended after coming under challenge from various groups.
The Supreme Court ruled in
February that the law was not unconstitutional, paving the way for its implementation.
But the court ruled against a provision giving authorities sweeping
powers to shut down websites or record Internet traffic data in real
time.
