By Vir B. Lumicao
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| Biscocho during her arrest in November 2019 |
A Filipina who used to work as a domestic helper and a local
resident have denied charges that they had accepted payments for non-existent
jobs and for laundering more than $700,000 they got from applicants.
Marijane Biscocho, 44, and Lennis Ebrahim, 55, pleaded not guilty to each of the charges read to them at the opening of their 15-day District Court trial that was held in West Kowloon Court on Monday, Aug 2.
Customs and Excise investigators arrested Biscocho and Ebrahim on Nov 7, 2019 and charged them with wrongly accepting payment for a product, contrary to the Trade Description Ordinance.
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Later in the investigation, an additional charge for money laundering was filed against them.
Biscocho faced 20 charges, mostly for allegedly receiving payments of $6,000 each from job applicants between Oct 1, 2018 and Jun 16, 2019.
Most of the charges involved recruitment in 2018 by Biscocho for Ebrahim’s WHT Consultant Company for supposed jobs such as factory worker, waiter, housekeeper, welder, printer, and caregivers in Hong Kong and Macau.
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The purported jobs, which promised a high salary and residency, attracted scores of Filipino domestic worker applicants who swarmed WHT’s office in Kwun Tong, and later to the renamed agency’s office in To Kwa Wan, Kowloon City.
Among the complainants are Rosalina Agcalis, Jocelyn
Domingo, Nena Castro, Maria Aurora Lagura, Jovelyn Villaflor, Mary Joy Liggayu
and Precisosa Abellera, who applied mostly for two jobs for relatives as
waiters, housekeeper, printer, caregiver and welder in Hong Kong and
When the applicants chased WHT for the promised jobs after five to six months of waiting, the agency moved out of its Kwun Tong office.
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Angry applicants tracked them down in 2019 to the
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| Ebrahim's two companies were allegedly used for the illegal recruitment |
Biscocho was also charged with alleged breach of condition of stay for working in Ebrahim’s two employment agencies between Oct 1, 2018 and Jun 16, 2019.
This was despite being contracted to work as a domestic helper for Peter Chan Hin-man, with a visa issued on Sept 27, 2017 and valid until Nov 12, 2019.
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Biscocho additionally faced two counts of money laundering, after Customs investigators alleged that she had handled a total of $299,745 in a Hang Seng Bank account between Jun 17, 2018 and Sept 30, 2019.
She was hit with a second money laundering charge after investigators discovered that she had allegedly dealt with $110,500 deposited in a Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corp account between Sept 23, 2018 and Jun 16, 2019. The fund was believed to have come from payments by job applicants.
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Ebrahim faces only two charges. First, she was jointly charged with Biscocho for allegedly accepting $6,000 from Mary Joy Liggayu on Nov 13, 2018 as agency fee for her brother Mario Liggayu, for a promised job as a printer in Hong Kong.
Ebrahim was also charged with money laundering for allegedly
dealing with a total of $331,216 between Sept 23, 2018 and Jun 16, 2019 in a
The two defendants are out on bail.
The hearing continues.
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