BAGUIO CITY – Casino junket group Team Z, earlier blamed by “investors” and “account managers” to have carted away “investments” that reportedly have reached a few billion pesos, said it wants the plain truth behind the fraud complaints flooding the National Bureau of Investigation-Cordillera since last week.
Accusations of fraud, said alleged Team Z leaders Hector Aldwin Liao Pantollana, his brother Hubert Amiel, brothers Hazen and Hein Carreon Humilde, Mikaela Damasco Ty-Choi, and Virginio Casupanan, “are unfair and bereft of verifiable evidence.”
“We would like to clarify that the money of the alleged complainants were not pocketed as alleged by some of them,” they said.
“We are interested for the sake of truth to find out where the alleged money went by way of paper trail, including who got or received the sums, and who benefitted from these alleged transactions.”
A complainant said Pantollana and his Team Z leaders duped them into believing that they would continue receiving their five percent monthly “return of investment” and two percent more for those who convinced others to invest purportedly meant for casino junket financing in Parañaque City.
The complainants from Baguio City added that although they were initially receiving their monthly payouts, it did not last long as millions of investments collected from them were pocketed and did not get re-invested into casino junket financing.
They added “investors” were issued investment contracts disguised as contracts of loan locked in for a period of 12 months.
Team Z said these allegations were “unfair, unfounded, and unjust for some complainants to make a sweeping allegation that we are operating a scheme to defraud certain individuals.”
They said they have yet to see documents relative to these alleged complaints.
They said they will face the issues being thrown at them in the proper forum and urged the public “to look at the other side of the coin.”