Pinay gets 18 months in Canada over investment scam

A Canada-based Filipina has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for masterminding an investment scam that duped 16 people of more than $450,000 in 2007.

According to a report on the Toronto Star, Rowena Villanueva, 49, was also ordered by Provincial Court Justice Ford Clements to pay the victims the amount she took from them.

The report said Villanueva promised her victims a 10-percent return for investing on her chiropractic clinics. She reportedly lured them by saying the investment is a good way for them to earn money that could be sent to their families in the Philippines.

The investors were mostly Filipino caregivers and personal support workers.

Villanueva, who did not own any clinics, disappeared when the victims started demanding their money back. The Star, which investigated the scam, found her living in a dilapidated townhouse in North York in 2011.

Many of the victims lost their life savings to the scam.

“It was a very, very thorough decision,” Toronto police Det. Peter Christie, who investigated the scam, said in the Toronto Star report.

Charges against Villanueva's co-accused, Quintin Robles, 57, were dropped after it was revealed during the hearing that he has stage-four pancreatic cancer. —KBK, GMA News

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