A domestic helper was sentenced to 16 months imprisonment after she failed in a trial at the Eastern Court to convince the magistrate that she accidentally threw away the ATM card used to deposit and withdraw a total of $1 million from her bank account.
Ronnalyn Manalo, 34 years old, had been accused of money laundering for letting her account in Hang Seng Bank Limited to be used in dealing with $1,086,434 in crime proceeds during the 13-day period on April 10-22 2024.
Magistrate Tobias Cheng convicted her of dealing with property known or believed to represent proceeds of indictable offence, contrary to sections. 25(1) and 25(3) of the Organized and Serious Crimes Ordinance.
Magistrate Cheng questioned why she wrote the PIN for the ATM in a piece of paper that got mixed up with the grocery receipts that were thrown away. She also did not report the ATM card’s loss to the bank or the police.
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Magistrate Cheng noted that the testimony of Manalo‘s employer, to whom she turned over the receipts after her trip to the grocery store, did not help her claim.
The employer testified that she did not notice the ATM card among the receipts when she threw them away. “She would have noticed the bank card because of its thickness,” Magistrate Cheng said..
In mitigation, Manalo’s lawyer said she arrived in Hong Kong in 2019 to work as a domestic helper and that she has a husband and one child in the Philippines.
He said that aside from the fact that she she can’t get another job after this case, the 19 months it took to resolve it was stressful to her.
