{"id":20415,"date":"2012-05-28T01:51:11","date_gmt":"2012-05-28T01:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newspaper.ctsi-logistics.com\/?p=20415"},"modified":"2012-05-28T01:51:11","modified_gmt":"2012-05-28T01:51:11","slug":"case-vs-owner-of-defunct-remittance-center-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/case-vs-owner-of-defunct-remittance-center-dismissed\/","title":{"rendered":"Case vs owner of defunct remittance center dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>By Ferdie de la Torre<br \/>\nReporter<\/div>\n<p>The federal court has dismissed the case against the owner of a defunct remittance center who was charged with conspiracy to defraud a Philippine bank.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. District Court for the NMI Chief Judge Ramona V. Manglona dismissed without prejudice the indictment against Haydn Villegas.<\/p>\n<p>Manglona issued the order last week after the U.S. government and Villegas both agreed to dismiss the indictment.<\/p>\n<p>Dismissal without prejudice means the plaintiff is allowed to re-file a new suit on the same claim in the future.<\/p>\n<p>Assistant U.S. attorney Rami S. Badawy told the court that issues have arisen that call into question whether the government can prove its case against Villegas beyond reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n<p>Badawy said Villegas and his counsel, Timothy H. Bellas, agreed with this motion to dismiss the case.<\/p>\n<p>Villegas, through counsel Timothy H. Bellas, earlier stated that neither he nor his wife, Ana Maria V. Villegas, were aware that co-defendant Armilaine Salamat was falsifying their company&#8217;s books.<\/p>\n<p>Ms. Villegas did not request Salamat to do so, nor did she request Salamat to illegally wire the money, said Bellas.<\/p>\n<p>Salamat used to serve as manager of PNB Express, which was then a subsidiary of Philippine National Bank.<\/p>\n<p>In June 2010, Salamat pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. She is currently awaiting her sentencing.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Villegas was the co-owner of the defunct Philippine Express Remittance who allegedly defrauded the Philippine National Bank of about $109,855. The Villegas couple pleaded not guilty to the charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ferdie de la Torre Reporter The federal court has dismissed the case against the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}