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| The legendary Marcos treasure was again cited as the source of a fake US$500 billion bank certificate |
A Filipino tourist convicted of trying to pass off a fake gold
certificate for US$500 billion as genuine at HSBC a year ago was ordered jailed
for two years by a District Court judge today, Oct 2.
David Morano Jr, who was described as a president of a
construction company in Davao
City
Morano arrived in Hong Kong
with a male companion on Oct 28 last year and presented the fake documents to the
HSBC headquarters in Central the next day, in an attempt to check their
authenticity.
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An alert bank staff showed the certificates to her boss, who
in turn called the police. The bank manager said the certificates were not
printed in the standard layout of HSBC documents and did not have the correct name of the bank.
Morano’s companion disappeared when police arrived and his
identity was never known.
Judge Dufton said that had the HSBC staff not detected that
the bank instruments were bogus, the bank would have lost a huge amount of
money.
Morano claimed that the certificates were given to him by
the deposed Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos to fund his own humanitarian
projects. But it was not clear why he had kept them for more than three decades
since they were issued.
The instruments consisted of an HSBC deposit receipt for US$500
billion gold certificates in the name of Morano supposedly issued by the bank on
Jun 12, 1983, four HSBC cards bearing his name and 12 documents certifying he
owns the gold certificates.
The judge said the documents were forged letters from the
United Nations, the United
States
Dufton cited that in similar previous convictions for
attempts to pass off fake bank instruments as genuine, the sentence was four
and a half years.
He said he considered the fact that Morano came to Hong Kong purposely to commit the offense, which involved
a huge amount of money, and that he brought with him other forged documents.
The judge said he also considered the convict’s clear record
in Hong Kong and his good behavior while in
detention. He said he was sentencing him to three years but discounted it by a
year.
After the judge left the courtroom, Morano’s counsel told
him he should be released by Oct 28 next year, counting the 11 months he has
already served in prison.
The reason for the judgment was read to Morano in another
courtroom by a Tagalog interpreter before Dufton called the parties to his
court,.
In mitigation, Hemmings said Morano was president of a
construction company in Davao
When Dufton asked who was looking after his daughters, the
lawyer said they were now in the care of the defendant’s sister.
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