Ylagan allowed to post bail

By Daisy CL Mandap

Ylagan was held for conspiracy
to defraud and money laundering

Ester Ylagan, co-owner of the defunct Service Staff and Employment Agency, was allowed to post bail earlier today, 9 June, after being questioned by Hong Kong Police for about 48 hours.

In an emailed response to a query on the status of Ylagan’s investigation, a police spokesperson said, “the 65-year-old arrested woman was released on Police bail and is required to report back to Police in early July 2018.”

Earlier, the Police confirmed to The SUN that Ylagan had been arrested on June 7 in Western District for “conspiracy to defraud” and “dealing with property known or believed to represent proceeds of an indictable offence” (also known as money laundering).”

The arrest reportedly stemmed from complaints filed by 210 individuals starting in 2016, alleging that they had been deceived in a job recruitment scam in which each lost between $5,000 and $20,000.

Earlier reports indicated, however, that Ylagan had recruited up to 500 Filipino job applicants in Hong Kong, Macau and the Philippines for non-existent jobs in Britain and Canada. The total amount involved was estimated to be closer to $5 million.

Subsequent investigations revealed she and several other people close to her had sent a total of around $10 million to several countries as far apart as Malaysia and Burkina Faso. 

Ylagan was arrested one day after Arnold Grospe, another Filipino on the police’s lookout list was detained in Central.

Grospe was the marketing director of Peya Travel, which collapsed in December last year amid complaints of unpaid air tickets from more than 1,000 of its customers.

Hundreds of complainants were unable to board their flights back to the Philippines over the last Christmas holidays because Peya failed to pay its airline agents for the tickets.

Check out The SUN's earlier story on this here: https://www.sunwebhk.com/2018/06/hk-police-arrest-ylagan-grospe.html