OPINION | Catch me if you can

August 27, 2024 , 10:40 PM

By Manny Mogato

(August 27, 2024) — For several months, American Frank Abagnale Jr. eluded federal agents in a frantic chase across the United States, conning his way by impersonating a secret service agent, an airline pilot, a lawyer, and a doctor.

Frank was tracked down in his mother’s hometown in France and was convinced to surrender to the local police. He was later extradited to the United States.

He was sentenced to 12 years in a maximum-security prison but got out earlier, convincing the FBI to work for them in bank fraud cases.

Abagnale wrote a book about his exploits, adapted into a Hollywood film, “Catch Me If You Can,” in 2002, with Leonardo DiCaprio as lead and directed by Steven Spielberg.

The film could be a perfect model for the exploits of former Bamban, Tarlac mayor Alice Leal Guo, who left the country in mid-July and showed up at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport past midnight on July 18. She arrived on a flight from Denpasar in Indonesia.

A few days later, she flew to Singapore, and after a month, she went on a cruise to Indonesia’s Batam island.

Two of her companions, Sheila Guo and Cassandra Ong, were caught in a shopping mall by Indonesian immigration authorities and deported back to Manila.

Alice Guo remained at large. No one knows her whereabouts, but Philippine authorities suspected she was still in Indonesia and attempting to do another Abagnale act.

Alice Guo’s meteoric rise to political power was a fantastic tale. She was never a barangay or municipal councilor before she ran for mayor and won in May 2022.

Her success could be attributed to her fabulous wealth as a hog raiser and a close friend of the town’s former mayor, who pushed her to run for public office.

But her luck ran out when Senator Risa Hontiveros exposed her links to offshore gambling operations in the province.

She owned properties near the town hall where several buildings were housing the operations of Chinese-run Philippine Offshore Gaming Office (POGOs).

The Chinese companies in Bamban have sister companies operating similar POGO businesses in Porac town in Pampanga.

Her links to these illegal POGO businesses were the grounds used by the government to terminate her term as municipal mayor.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) has also filed a disqualification case against her, preventing her from seeking another term next year and to hold other public offices.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) also found a document showing her as a Chinese national, which matches the fingerprints of her Philippine-issued passport.

Her real identity, according to Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, could be Guo Hua Ping after he found documents from the Board of Investments (BOI) about her parents.

She might have entered the country in 2003 when she was 13 years old and was born in Fujian, China.

When she was 17 years old, someone filed a late registration for her birth, granting her an authentic birth certificate and listing her mother as a Filipina.

That started her life as a fraud, weaving a fantastic tale about growing up on a farm with an older sister and a younger brother. She claimed her Filipino mother was a house helper.

But the Senate inquiry shattered, little by little, the myths about Guo Hua Ping or Alice Guo.

The latest information from the Senate revealed that her elder sister, Sheila Guo, who was caught in Batam, Indonesia, was not his biological sister.

Her real name was Zhang Mier, and she was also born in southern China.

The mystery of Alice Guo’s fraudulent existence deepens with Sheila Guo’s real identity.

Sheila’s testimonies at the Senate shed little information about how Alice and her companions fled the Philippines in mid-July.

Based on her account, Alice and Sheila boarded a van to a northern province where a “white boat” was waiting for them.

They transferred to a fishing boat and made another boat transfer before reaching Indonesia.

Using Philippine passports, they flew to Malaysia, and then to Singapore where they stayed for a month and met with Guo’s biological parents. Cassandra Ong was with them in the trip.

Philippine authorities still needed to determine whether Alice Guo left by boat in Zambales or Pangasinan.

The Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission said it monitored some Chinese nationals at Eman Pulo resort in Zambales and thought Alice Guo and her companions were there.

But Senator Jinggoy Estrada theorized it could be in Sual, Pangasinan because Sheila claimed they traveled almost five hours from Manila. Alice Guo had a friend in Sual town.

Both these pieces of information needed to be validated and confirmed. Thus, no one knows how Alice Guo fled the country.

Her exploits are one for the books. It could shame Frank Abagnale’s tale in the book and the film.

Hollywood could also make a movie about the rise and fall of Alice Guo. She, after all, has a fascinating life as a fraud.

Is she a Chinese spy or a plain member of a deadly Chinese criminal syndicate?

*The views expressed by the columnist do not necessarily reflect that of the media organization.

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