By Atty. Antonio P. Pekas
The former register of deeds of Baguio City is now in jail at the National Penitentiary in Muntinlupa City. He was convicted of graft and corruption.
The register of deeds is the official who takes care of land titles, the registration thereof and any annotation thereon. Annotations include mortgages when a land it used as a collateral to secure a loan from a bank, for instance. Cancellations of such annotations are also within his domain, although sometimes these need an order of a court or a notarized document.
He may also order the cancellation of a title if the lot covered by this was sold such that a new title will be issued in the name of the buyer. Therein lies the jump off point of our story. A person from Pangasinan had a real estate property in Baguio City. This person has a Chinese name and allegedly owns a hospital in his hometown. Later, he discovered that his property’s title was in the name of strangers and was mortgaged to secure a loan of P15 million from a local bank. The property of about 700 square meters must be in a commercial area in Baguio City to be able to have that mortgage value.
How did that happen when he was still holding the title of the land in his own name? Issuance of a new title requires the surrender of the old title. In this case, that did not happen. Why?
Somebody posed as the representative of the rightful owner of the land as was allegedly proven by a Special Power of Attorney. That representative then sold the land to some characters who pretended to be husband and wife. Obviously these were the representative’s partners in crime. Even without surrendering the old title which was with the rightful owner, this was recorded at the Registry of Deeds to have been cancelled and a new one was issued in the names of the supposed buyers, the partners in crime of the representative.
During the trial of the graft and corruption case, the examiner at the Registry of Deeds was presented as a witness. He testified that before a title is issued he has to certify that such is above-board and that the old title was surrendered. This did not happen in this case. In fact, the examiner disapproved of the issuance of a new title of the subject land because the old title was not surrendered. Still the head of office, the Register of Deeds commanded him to issue the new title. As it happened, it was immediately mortgaged to a local bank for P15 million as aforesaid.
Such was a big proof that he was with the group that profited from the loan and the deprivation of the rightful owner of his valuable property.
Yes there are syndicates in Baguio City victimizing innocent land owners. For buyers of land, the thing to remember is ‘caveat emptor’ which means ‘buyers beware.’ For those who have properties, it does not hurt to once in a while drop by the Registry of Deeds (at the basement of City Hall) to inquire if your land title is still in your name.
In Metro Manila, such syndicates are even more powerful and well entrenched. I once handled a case where a foreigner buyer bought a land in Quezon City and the sellers showed the land title which appeared to be clean. When we verified, however, the genuineness of the title at that city’s Registry of Deeds, the Register of Deeds could not issue a certification to that effect. This was because he had no records to verify the genuneness of the title that was shown to the buyer. This was because that office, as I recalled, was burned about five years before that time. So no more original documents to compare it with.
Nevertheless, we were able to file criminal cases against the members of the syndicate. When we reached the trial stage, one of the defenses of the members of the group who were the accused presented a certification showing that the paper (a security paper) where the title was typed on was a genuine security paper and was part of a bulk of “blank land titles” which disappeared when the Registry of Deeds there was burned as earlier mentioned..
The bottom line was that the foreigner buyer who was our client lost a few millions. Then I turned over that case as I was already packing my bags to relocate to Baguio City during that time.
Before we filed the case, I conducted an investigation on the property and that it was owned by somebody else. The long and short of it is that our foreigner client did not do an acceptable “due diligence” before parting with his money. Buyers beware.**
