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http://www.thestar.com/article/170972
Refugee claimant allegedly bilks friends for millions
Refugee claimant Janice Del Rosario gained friends with her kindness – and enemies who allege they were scammed out of millions
January 14, 2007
Dale Brazao
staff reporter
She came into their lives out of nowhere – a beautiful, God-fearing woman preaching love, bearing presents, and offering everyone an opportunity to share in her good fortune.
Janice Del Rosario dressed in Gucci and drove a BMW. And she dispensed kindness, compassion and good deeds "like a Mother Teresa."
But when she disappeared suddenly last November, the velvet-tongued Del Rosario left behind a dozen victims clutching an armful of bounced cheques, useless promissory notes and slim chances of recovering any of the estimated $1.5 million they claim she took from them. Victims who spoke to the Star said the amount taken may be much higher, but those victims have not come forward.
"I never in my life thought she was capable of something like this," says 75-year-old Luigi Chiarotto who says he is owed about $1.2 million. "She seemed honest, very honest, like my daughter."
Del Rosario feted the retired construction worker with a lavish surprise party on his 73rd birthday. A cancer victim was given a prepaid cemetery plot. Some got Danier leather jackets, others Swarovski crystal.
Even as the 44-year-old Filipino refugee claimant garnered sympathy among newfound friends with horrific stories of her family being extortion victims back home, they say she was setting them up to be exploited.
When she began offering 10-per-cent return on personal loans for just 10 days they were ready with their chequebooks, and paid the price for that all too human weakness – greed.
Some lost their life savings, others were hit up for luxury cars and credit cards. And a lot of people who should've known better are left wondering just who on earth is Janice Florence Vasquez Del Rosario?
And more important, where is she now?
Del Rosario, her husband, Kaye, 34, and their two boys, aged 8 and 13 went into hiding on Nov. 15, the day before they were to surrender to immigration authorities for deportation to their native Philippines. Her eldest son, Jose Vicente Tayzon, 25, who is here on a student visa, says he does not know where his mother is.
"She's not here, she left months ago," Tayzon says, adding he is aware of the warrant for her arrest. "Whatever the allegations are, I am removed from that. I am not in communication with them."
The family, who came to Canada in March 2003 as visitors, then applied for refugee status claiming they were victims of extortion by corrupt Filipino police officials, had exhausted all legal means of overturning their removal order.
A Canada-wide warrant was issued for their arrest after they failed to make a flight to Manila on Nov. 16.
The last place Janice and Kaye Del Rosario want to return to is to their own country, where both are wanted for fraud in connection with a large-scale pyramid-type scam. None of their alleged victims in Canada were aware there were warrants for their arrest in the Philippines when she started tapping them for loans.
By the time Del Rosario had finished with Chiarotto, the hard-working Italian immigrant was out $1.2 million in cash, and had co-signed leases for two luxury cars, a BMW X-5 for Janice, and a Mercedes-Benz for her husband.
"I said, why not a Dodge Caravan?" Chiarotto says. "But she said she had to have expensive cars so she could look good in her business."
After loaning Del Rosario, a woman he hardly knew, $800,000 without collateral, Chiarotto needed her to succeed in business, which she claimed was buying and selling high-end jewellery.
Chiarotto's wife, Lydia Pagulayan, a fellow Filipina immigrant, also signed documents to provide two credit cards for Del Rosario, who said she didn't qualify for credit in this country.
Over the next six months Del Rosario charged $33,000 on them, everything from pizzas and parking fees to payments for personal trainers, lunches at Sassafraz in Yorkville, and $11,000 shopping sprees at Gucci stores.
As apparently was her pattern, Del Rosario paid regular interest payments on the loans, giving Chiarotto post-dated cheques as collateral.
To prove her wealth and allay their fears, Del Rosario showed statements from TD and HSBC banks in Toronto and Equitable PCI bank in the Philippines attesting to more than $2 million on deposit with these institutions.
When Del Rosario called Chiarotto in a panic last summer, saying she was about to be deported unless he came up with another $200,000, Chiarotto mortgaged his house and gave her the money.
"She said her lawyer had an agreement with a judge that will allow her to be landed, but it must be $200,000 in cash," he says. "She started crying, crying. So I believe her.
"What could I do? It was either that or lose everything."
In exchange he got a promissory note dated Oct. 4, 2006, consolidating all the previous loans totalling $1,163,500. The note called for Del Rosario to start paying Chiarotto $20,000 a month, plus interest, conditional on her obtaining landed status. She also gave him a copy of her will, showing him to be a benefactor of her estate should she die before repaying the loans.
A month later, Del Rosario, who also goes by several aliases, disappeared. "She has no heart. She has no humanity," says Chiarotto.
The last time Chiarotto saw Del Rosario was Nov. 15, the day before she was to be deported when she drove to his modest Scarborough bungalow and phoned him from her BMW. When he came to the door, however, she had already driven off. (On Friday evening she phoned again, to say she'd start repaying him next month, and to ask if he'd been talking to a reporter.)
Before those final fleeting contacts, Chiarotto had last heard from her before Christmas, when Del Rosario phoned from an unknown location wishing him a Merry Christmas, saying she would send her brother or her son, Tayzon, to deliver the money she owes him.
Nobody showed up.
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Michael Labrecque, a Toronto real estate agent and a counsellor who works with the homeless and kids at risk, still can't quite believe he too fell for Del Rosario's charm and business proposals.
"We should've know better," says Labrecque, 29, who along with his wife, Cecilia Ramos, 28, a mortgage broker, is out more than $120,000. "I don't even know how we got in this deep. She portrayed herself as a religious, trustworthy person and we all fell for it."
Del Rosario claimed she was a wealthy businesswoman in the Philippines, where she operated several businesses including a finance company. She showed Ramos her bank account statement showing a balance of 44,196,000 pesos, more than $1 million Canadian.
As she had done with the others, Del Rosario gave Ramos and Labrecque cheques written on her business account, Gloval Venture Trading and Investment Placement, at a TD-Canada Trust branch in Thornhill. Most of those cheques have bounced.
A spokesperson for the TD bank told the Star that the alleged victims should take their case to police and that the bank would co-operate fully in any police investigation.
"She was really good," Ramos says, explaining how Del Rosario took her for $90,000. "Michael is probably the cheapest person in the world and he gave her $30,000."
"We know of at least another five people who are owed about $300,000," says Labrecque.
Ramos claims that the previously pleasant Del Rosario left a chilling message on her answering machine after learning she and other investors had gone to the police.
"Tears of blood will flow from your eyes if you come after me," was the message Del Rosario left in Tagalog, the Filipino language.
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Catalina "Nini" Coran fell hook, line and sinker for Del Rosario's stories of hardship in the Philippines, her warmth, and generosity and, finally, her hard pitches for money.
"She had some magical power," says Coran, an insurance broker who is out $70,000.
Del Rosario held weekly prayer meetings at her North York condo and regularly text-messaged her friends with inspirational quotations from the Bible.
"She was like Mother Teresa helping everybody, and sharing her wealth," says Coran.
"She told us all those horrible stories about her son's kidnapping. That she had paid a ransom of 40 million pesos. We all felt sorry for her and we all wanted to help," she said.
In documents filed with the Federal Court of Canada, Del Rosario claims only that an "attempt" had been made to kidnap her son from his private school in Manila on March 7, 2003, but no ransom was paid.
She also claims she and her husband, a police captain in Quezon City, had to pay off corrupt police officers who were constantly shaking them down. They fled because they feared more kidnap attempts and demands for payoffs.
In denying their claim as refugees in January 2004, adjudicator Paul Ariemma found Del Rosario and her husband had "embellished fragments of reality to create a basis for their claims."
Two Federal court judges have refused to stay their deportation order in the past year, setting the stage for the family's removal from Canada last Nov. 16.
The fact that Del Rosario was able to stave off deportation for more than three years has angered her victims.
"If she had been deported when she was supposed to be, we wouldn't be out all this money," says Coran. "She went into full-blast mode when she knew she was on her way out."
Requests for loans would be preceded with meals at fancy restaurants, gifts of jewellery and offers of incredible interest amounting to more than 3,000 per cent a year.
"The interest was illusory. It was the worm on the end of a hook," says lawyer Ed Tonello, who is representing six of the victims in an attempt to recoup their losses.
"She said she was making so much money with her jewellery business that she wanted us all to share in it, too," Coran says, recalling the pitch that ensnared her. "She showered us with gifts, but she was buying us with our own money."
Coran's sister-in-law, Maria, 46, an educational assistant with the Toronto Board of Education, was lured in for $35,000 after meeting Del Rosario.
"I can't even show you paper, because I invested through a friend at work and I don't have anything on paper to prove it," says an accountant with a drug store chain who is owed $70,000, but does not want to be identified out of embarrassment.
"No receipt, no promissory note, nothing. I was just plain stupid."
She said she knows there are others in her company who also loaned Del Rosario money.
Del Rosario was so good, Coran says, that when someone demanded repayment of their principal, she would chide them for doubting her ability to pay up, then persuade the lender to roll over their principal into another loan at even higher interest.
"She was that good," Coran says. "A Mother Teresa without a conscience."
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The first hint of trouble came late last summer, when word got around that the leasing company had repossessed Kaye Del Rosario's 2006 Mercedes-Benz after he defaulted on the lease.
The dealership later sold the automobile but has notified Chiarotto that, as co-signer, he must pay $22,000, the difference between the buyout price of the lease and what they got for it. The Parkview BMW dealership also recently notified Chiarotto he is on the hook for the entire value of the 2006 BMW X5 unless he agrees to the lease payments of more than $1,000 a month.
Recently, the Star found the dark green BMW X-5 stashed in the underground parking at 23 Lorraine Ave., a condo complex at Yonge St. and Finch Ave. where Del Rosario's son, Tayzon, lives. His own silver BMW 325i is parked near his mother's.
After learning of Chiarotto's predicament the victims split into two groups. Several victims complained to 43 Division fraud squad detective Daniel Johnson, but they say he told them it was a civil case. Johnson did not return several calls from the Star.
The other group is keeping silent, Coran says. "They're her loyalists. They're afraid if they turn on her, they'll lose everything."
Labrecque and Ramos last saw Del Rosario on Nov. 15, the eve of her scheduled deportation, in the office of a lawyer who was handling the financial claims against her. Del Rosario, Ramos says, had agreed to a repayment schedule on their loans, but the lawyer quashed the deal.
"Her lawyer wouldn't let her sign anything, saying it didn't make any sense for her to pay us back if she was being kicked out of the country the next day."
The lawyer refused to discuss the incident, but said the version of events as related by Ramos and Labrecque is "incorrect."
The couple first turned to a "financial bounty hunter," but he was unable to find either the fugitive or any of her assets.
"If I find them they are toast," says the immigration enforcement officer who has been scouring the GTA for the family for the past two months. "They've had due process. They'll be detained until they get on a plane.
"Their claim has been discounted. They've been found not to be at risk if they are returned to the Philippines."
The couple had been the subject of a previous Canada-wide arrest warrant for failing to appear for a pre-deportation meeting.
Immigration lawyer Mendel Green got them to surrender, then brokered a deal whereby Del Rosario and her husband were released on their own recognizance and were to leave Canada voluntarily.
"Instead they used the time to go into hiding," says an immigration source, adding the family purchased airline tickets, but did not make their flight. "They cleaned up their business, hid all their stuff and covered their tracks pretty well."
Green says he has no idea where his former clients are now. "All I can say is that for a short period of time I was her lawyer,"
Accused fugitive to be deported
DALE BRAZAO/TORONTO STAR
Janice Del Rosario, accused of bilking a dozen people out of $1.5 million, was arrested by the Toronto Fugitive Squad and immigration enforcement officers.
Fugitive accused of bilking friends says they just `panicked.' She and husband to be deported today, without jewellery
January 19, 2007
Dale Brazao
staff reporter
A woman accused of bilking her friends of some $2 million in personal loans yesterday blamed her "investors" for her woes, saying that after they went to police with allegations of fraud she had no choice but to go into hiding.
"They panicked and thought I'd run away with their money," said Janice Del Rosario, who was arrested Monday after evading a Canada-wide immigration warrant for two months. "These are my friends. They are my investors. If they had not panicked I would have paid everybody back."
In an interview at the Canada Immigration detention centre yesterday, Del Rosario, 44, said she had every intention of paying them back but a deportation order derailed those plans.
Her husband, Kaye Gravador Del Rosario, 33, the subject of a similar warrant, surrendered to police at a sandwich shop near Leslie St. and Finch Ave. yesterday afternoon after two months on the lam. The couple are also wanted in the Philippines on several charges of fraud arising out of an alleged pyramid scheme drawing in some 200 police and military personnel in that country. Among the alleged victims is a general, two colonels and a police chief.
One of the alleged victims in Manila is the wife of a police superintendent who claims she is out about $180,000 Canadian in her dealings with the fugitive couple.
Del Rosario said those charges were laid only after she and her husband had left the Philippines. The superintendent was working for her on commission of 5 per cent for every client he referred to her, she said. The superintendent turned on her because she had stopped making commission payments, she said.
Janice and Kaye Del Rosario, and their two boys, 13, and 8, went into hiding Nov. 15, the day before they were to surrender to immigration authorities for deportation. Janice Del Rosario was arrested Monday night after she barricaded herself in a basement apartment on Bathurst St. near Highway 401.
The family is scheduled to be deported today.
The arrests come on the heels of a Star investigation published Sunday depicting the stories of a number of alleged victims in the GTA including a 75-year-old pensioner who claims he was bilked out of $1.2 million. The others say they are out between from $30,000 to $70,000.
The alleged scam was based on an offer of a 10 per cent return on personal loans for just 10 days. Del Rosario claimed she was involved in buying and selling high-end jewellery and would give them post-dated cheques as collateral on the loans. Most of those cheques have bounced.
None of the alleged victims in Canada were aware there were warrants for the Del Rosario's arrest in the Philippines when she started tapping them for loans.
Del Rosario insists she was making regular interest payments but the investors panicked and called in their loans when they learned her claim for refugee status had been denied and she was being deported.
"They all went to cash the cheques at the same time and, of course, they bounced," she said.
Del Rosario said she had tried to work out a last-minute deal to pay her friends back with jewellery but it was rejected because "they wanted cash."
The alleged victims claim Del Rosario showered them with expensive gifts and held weekly prayer meetings at her North York condo.
Del Rosario said she went into hiding because of fears of what will happen to her when she returns to the Philippines.
"They can do anything they want to me over there."
Immigration lawyer Henry Moyal, who has represented Del Rosario in the past, said there is a legitimate fear that she will be "beaten or even raped" when she returns to her homeland.
Moyal said Del Rosario left a "heartfelt" message on his machine after he visited her in the detention centre saying that she was glad she had at least gotten out part of her story.
At the time of her arrest, Del Rosario was found in possession of three large bags of jewellery. At one point yesterday she was trying to negotiate a deal in which she would tell police where her husband was as long as she could keep the jewellery, a source said.
Staff Sgt. Paul MacIntyre of Toronto's fugitive squad said police have been served with a court order from a lawyer freezing the jewellery until the rightful ownership can be determined.
dbrazao@thestar.ca
http://www.thestar.com/article/172745
Who is JANICE del Rosario ?
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