Lawyer’s Death not Related to Gambling Rivalry

 By Mortz C. Ortigoza

DAGUPAN CITY – A staff of a small time lottery (STL) franchise disputed the claim of other people that the death recently of a lawyer here ensued because of the rivalry between two gambling entities.

“It is not true that Anthony Ang-angco and Lito Millora have a hand on the killing of Attorney Crisostomo. He is even their lawyer despite Attorney Val counseling with the Peryahan ng Bayan in Pangasinan,” the staff, who asked for anonymity, told this newspaper.

In the fateful morning of May 17, a gunman wearing a motorcycle helmet shot to death lawyer Val Crisostomo while he was standing near a restaurant that is only across the Hall of Justice in Barangay Bonuan Gueset of this city.

BOLD - The gunman wearing a motorcycle helmet shot to death lawyer Val Crisostomo, 39, while he went to his sport’s utility  vehicle (SUV) parked near the Justice Hall in Dagupan City to get his mobile phone.

News report said he just attended a hearing of a frustrated murder case as a private prosecutor at the Regional Trial Court here before he fell to a volley of fires from the assassin’s .45 hand gun.

Ang-angco and Millora used to run together the Speed Game, Inc (SGI) until both have a falling out when Millora and then SGI President Edward J. Aguilar fired Ang-angco as the numbers game’s administrator.

 PCSO backed new SGI President David Diciano sacked Millora as General Manager in Pangasinan and appointed Ang-angco as the General Manager of the lottery in the huge province.

PnB, on the other hand, siphoned some of the P177 million presumptive monthly retail receipt (PMRR) of SGI that it remitted to the Philippine Charity Sweepstake Office when it entered the numbers’ game in January this year.

The source said that Crisostomo still acted as a counsel for Wilfredo Ang-angco, first cousin of Ang-angco, and the men of the SGI General Manager, in an illegal possession of explosive case when law enforcers raided the house of Ang-angco.

That raid hailed from the dispute between Ang-angco and national “Gambling Lord” Charlie “Atong” Ang, head of Meridien Vista and Gaming Corp. (MVGC)

 Angangco, Millora, and Alfie Sorinao sued Ang with a preliminary injunction in 2016 at the RTC here to stop the operation of “jai-teng” that purportedly raked P1.5 million daily collections in forty-four towns and four cities' Pangasinan.

The source wondered that how can Millora be behind the assassination when his twenty million of pesos’ mansion in Pasig City he loaned at BDO should have been foreclosed when Angangco provided him a lawyer in Crisostomo to deflect the foreclosure.

According to the Manila Times, Crisostomo initiated the filing of several pending criminals, administrative, and civil cases against agents of the National Bureau of Investigation, officials of the Pangasinan’s Philippines National Police and other private individuals in relation to the operation of the PnB.

PCSO Chairman Anselmo Simeon P. Pinili furnished last February 16, 2019 NBI Director Dante A. Gierran about his letter to President Rodrigo Duterte on the illegal and unauthorized operations of Globaltech Mobile Online Corporation’s (Globabltech) PnB that has been adversely affecting the operations of PCSO’s Small Town Lottery Authorized (STL) Agents.

Then PCSO General Manager Alexander F. Balutan cited that the franchisee of Globalech to operate PNB in various provinces were terminated last February 17, 2016.

The source said law enforcers should look also to the work of Crisostomo as a highly demanded counsel for annulment of marriage, those who have huge money claims, and the high profile dangerous drugs case in Mangaldan and other narcotics cases at other towns in Pangasinan that he handled.

READ MY OTHER ARTICLE:

Blunders on the scrapped AFP's Missile Systems; Lessons from the Yom Kippur War