Fingerprints of Alice Guo and Guo Hua Ping match—NBI
The fingerprints of suspended Bamban Mayor Alice Guo, who claims to be Filipino, matched with those of a Chinese citizen named Guo Hua Ping, Senator Risa Hontiveros said.
The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) compared Guo's fingerprints to the database used for NBI clearances and to the fingerprints found on her Chinese passport, which the Senate obtained from her Special Investors Resident Visa application.
“Indeed, the NBI has confirmed that the fingerprints of Mayor Alice Guo and Guo Hua Ping match. This means these are the fingerprints of one and the same person,” Hontiveros said.
“This confirms what I have suspected all along. ‘Mayor Alice’—or should I say, Guo Hua Ping—is a fake Filipino. She is a Chinese national masquerading as a Filipino citizen to facilitate crimes being committed by Pogo,” she added.
“This is the biggest evidence we can have to oust ‘Mayor Alice’ from her position.”
Hontiveros commended the government agency and requested the Office of the Solicitor General to expedite the filing of a quo warranto case to oust Guo.
“This revelation is not the end. Guo Hua Ping, soon, we will know the full extent of your deception. We will continue with our Senate investigation. We will dig deeper and locate the systemic roots of our Pogo problem,” she said.
It was revealed by the senators that Guo may have stolen a Filipino person’s identity after another person under the name Alice Leal Guo with the same birthday and birthplace was registered in the NBI clearance system.
Market vendors, BPO worker named 'incorporators'
Meanwhile, it was also discovered that the identities of three local market vendors and a BPO worker in Tarlac were allegedly stolen to make it seem that they were her incorporators in Hongsheng Gaming Technology (now Zun Yuan Technology), the Philippine offshore gaming operator (Pogo) that Guo represented before she was elected mayor in Bamban.
During the Senate hearing, Tarlac resident Merly Joy Castro said she discovered that she was included in Guo’s human trafficking complaint.
Castro, a BPO worker, confirmed that the signature and Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) under her name in Hongsheng’s incorporation papers were hers.
“I do not know anything about making a corporation because I have no means to make one. I only go to work and back home,” Castro said in Filipino.
Bureau of Internal Revenue lawyer Ralbert Tibayan confirmed during the hearing that Castro’s real TIN did not match that of her alleged TIN as Hongsheng incorporator.
“Upon checking our system, it seems that the TIN assigned to Ms. Merly Castro in the Articles of Incorporation does not belong to any individual,” Tibayan said.
Moreover, Castro also learned that the alleged incorporator names alongside hers—Rowena Evangelista, Thelma Laranan, and Rita Yturralde—were familiar.
She said that Evangelista has a vegetable stall, Laranan sells breakfast food in the market, and Yturralde sells grilled meat.
“I don’t know if they are really incorporators. But I only see them in their stalls at the market,” Castro said in Filipino.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said that the evidence proves that "syndicates do not care if they put up fake names so that when charges are filed, the innocent people will be the ones charged.”
To further support his claims, he said his office used Google Street View to examine the residences of Laranan and Yturralde in Tarlac. It revealed modest dwellings occupied by families engaged in small businesses, not Pogo corporations.
“Because you did not do a proper probity check, innocent people like ma’am Merly get charged. A simple inspection would have helped the likes of Ma’am Merly. You violated your own guidelines,” Gatchalian told the Pagcor representative during the hearing.
Department of Justice (DOJ) Undersecretary Felix Nicholas Ty, who is also in charge of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking, said Castro and the other market vendors can coordinate with authorities to testify about their stolen identities.
Guo, who skipped Wednesday's hearing due to "stress," was given a warning by Hontiveros. She said that if she skipped the next hearing, it would result in a contempt citation
Guo is accused of lying in her certificate of candidacy about her birthplace and birthday. Guo listed her birthplace as Tarlac and her birthday as July 12, 1986 in the certificate and NBI clearance, but her passport indicates she was born in Fujian on August 31, 1990.
Recently, Hontiveros presented a document she received from the NBI that showed another woman bearing the name Alice Leal Guo, who was also born on July 12, 1986. (with reports from Marc Jayson Cayabyab)