The 2009 Manila Gold Scam

By Christina Retuya

With gold prices increasing amidst a global economy no longer enamoured with
the US dollar, sellers and buyers of the precious metal are engaged in a feeding
frenzy not seen for twenty years in the international gold market. Buyers are
desperately seeking out gold either on market or off market and sellers are
cutting back discounts; even adding premiums to their offerings now that there
are more buyers than sellers.

With the feeding frenzy comes a collection of sharks - many fraudulent sellers and
buyers - that prey on the desperation of genuine business men and women. These
scammers often entice buyers to far flung corners of the globe where they
present them with gold-plated lead and fake contracts showing thousands of
metric tonnes for sale (the on-market gold stock above ground is considered to be
150,000 metric tonnes).

One such shark is the US citizen (originally from the Philippines) called Benjamin
Olivares. Mr Olivares has a history of fraud - most recently a summary order to
cease and desist selling unregistered securities in Pennsylvania from the
Pennsylvania Securities Commission.
https://www.secure.psc.state.pa.us/releases/Members/index.cfm?
page=ReleaseDetail&id=761&ReleaseType=&ReleaseDate=&ReleaseYear=&Des
c=&Rescind=&CFID=291111&CFTOKEN=4d6824a97cb98cc5-6B469065-2B3A-
77E0-851EBC4A2BB30727&jsessionid=8030564191247340302437 Olivares
knows the Philippines well - his sister is the well known Filipino Daily Enquirer
columnist Belinda Olivares-Cunanan and his brother is a Manila resident.

Benjamin P Olivares - using the various trade sites where gold bullion brokers
cluster - has sent brokers and buyers inventories of gold bullion and platinum
showing hundreds of thousands of metric tonnes of sellable precious metals
hidden in various bunkers dotted around the Philippines. Using Skype and email,
Olivares lures would-be investors into visiting Manila by sending them
photographs of so-called stock, treasure maps, fake assay reports, ownership
documents made using Microsoft Paint and fake bullion certificates. Once these
investors are salivating, Olivares offers them unheard of discounts of 40% even
50% on deals (a standard gold bullion deal would have a discount somewhere
around 8%). He then says that he will reserve site stocks for the investors as long
as they fly out to Manila and stay for a while so they can visit the sites and get
their assayers to assay the product he claims to be the “facilitator” for.
When investors arrive in Manila they are told to check in at the best hotel in
Manila’s Edsa district from where, until recently, Olivares ran his gold fraud from
the 18th floor accompanied by a personal assistant Amanda and an entourage of
crooks with form as long as your arm. Sometimes Olivares arranges it so that
guests “stay free” only for them to pick up a bill on departure.

Day one usually involves Olivares showing investors a few holes in the ground
outside of Manila. This gives him a chance to get to know the investor and find out
what makes them tick. The holes in the ground are described as “gold bunkers
left by Japanese stragglers” - he gives the impression the holes are being worked
on now even though the most recent spade marks on the hole walls are several
months old. Jet-lagged investors go along with the charade - more bothered about
getting some sleep on the way back to Manila in the van than seeing some
genuine product on their first morning.

Once back at the hotel, Olivares has been known to pull out a series of maps. He
whets the appetite of likely buyers with tall tales about treasure sites full of
bullion, Rolexes, Japanese Samurai swords, US government bond certificates and
other assets which can be sold on immediately at huge profit. “X” marks the spots
on the map. “The Philippines is the richest country on the planet” he says - while
just metres from the hotel child beggars pick pockets and the Filipino populace
suffers as one of the lowest earning populations on the planet.

After the investor has seen a few holes, Olivares’ gang is the next destination on
the conveyor belt of this scam. A crooked gang steps in to welcome the investor.
This includes a veteran “Green beret” John Wagner (a US citizen allegedly
resident in Hong Kong) who deals with logistics and masquerades as a buyer for
the British bank RBS Coutts (with a budget of $600 billion yet he can’t afford to
buy coffees let alone pay his hotel bill). An Australian called Lance Blancheflower
who claims to be a bullion broker for a large buyer and says he owns a large
chunk of an Indonesian island from where he runs an environmental project (a
particularly repugnant individual known for berating innocent hotel receptionists
and getting physical with duty managers). A lady called “Ana” whose real name
is Catalina Villamarin who claims to be the late President Ferdinand Marcos’
daughter and has an old lady in her wake by the name of Erutida De Guzman who
pretends not to know what is happening but impersonates the Marcos family
nanny to the point of Oscar nomination. A local Filipino, Manuel G. Reyes of San
Pedro, Laguna who has links to Manila crime syndicates and works closely with
Olivares to perpetrate various frauds. And finally a woman called Mirla Romero
who allegedly represents a Mindanao gold site in the south of the Philippines and
carries around various test tubes in her handbag full of gold dust and chopped up
gold. All are complete fakes. None have links to any genuine gold stock. All work
in union to defraud investors of as many thousands of Filipino pesos they can get
their hands on while the investor stays in Manila. The gang is dangerous and
multi-faceted - making the innocent, jet-lagged investor wonder, even after he
has seen through Olivares, if the nice person introduced to him by Olivares is
actually the honest key to a successful trade. So begins a carousel of fraud - the
only ways out are to locate genuine sellers (of which there are several in the
Philippines) or to get on the next plane out.
One pair of investors arrived in Manila and were introduced to Catalina Villamarin
within a couple of days. After showing what appears to be valid Full Corporate
Offers for 1123MT of gold held on deposit with Bangko Sentral Ng Philipinas, she
seemed credible enough for them to invest in a plane trip to a remote town called
Tuguegarao City in the Northern Philippines, where they were told they would see
gold stocks and paperwork that established legal title to the metal hidden away in
caves a few hours trek from Tuguegarao City airport.

In the meantime Ben Olivares sat down with one of the pair and asked him for
$USD 8,000 to help pay for a charter plane arriving from the South which would
give him 1% of the deal by that same afternoon (a return of approximately 1000%
within 10 hours). The investor handed over a credit card he knew would be
rejected to keep face and, in spite of creeping doubts about Olivares, knew that
would be enough to maintain a reasonable relationship with Olivares so that he
would continue to introduce him to gold sellers.

When the pair of investors arrived in Tuguegarao City with Villamarin a couple of
days after the chartered plane money request, they were met by a party of
Villamarin’s colleagues who, instead of escorting the pair to a cave, took them to
a local mall where they were forced to pay for everyone’s lunch and then to a
mosquito-ridden hotel where they were made to pay for two rooms so that
product (a few gold bars) could be viewed by them in the security of the hotel.

Already suspicious, the pair hid money they had brought with them in their boots
and credit cards in their bag lining. When eventually the gold appeared they were
not allowed to hold it or touch it and so they were not able to verify if it was
genuine or not.

Next the gang associated with Villamarin started demanding mobilization and
security costs from the investors who - having paid a thousand dollars already to
Villamarin to arrange the trip - claimed they had no cash. There followed various
heated exchanges and the pair realized their personal safety was now at risk. To
release tension they walked to the nearest ATM and took out 20,000 pesos each
($USD 800) on debit cards - claiming that was their daily limit - handed it to the
gang and then escaped to jump on the next bus to Manila. The gang had
promised in the meantime to take pictures of the cave stock for them and took
their cameras to do so (the last ever seen by the investors of their cameras). The
gang also promised they would be in Manila within 24 hours with one metric tonne
of gold but of course neither the gold nor they ever materialized.

This pair were lucky. Their visit coincided with the hotel in Edsa realizing that they
too were being taken for a ride by Benjamin Olivares, John Wagner and Lance
Blancheflower who had not paid their hotel bills for quite some time. Olivares
owed several thousand dollars and was given twenty four hours to pay up while
the hotel ran out of patience with John Wagner and the investors returned from a
late night bar one evening to find Wagner in the hotel foyer surrounded by ten
security officials and Filipino policemen. Wagner was temporarily jailed then
thrown out of the hotel the next day. Olivares soon followed and so did
Blancheflower.

With their HQ taken away from them, the fraudsters sought a new hotel but were
turned down everywhere because hotel security had called round all the major
hotel chains in the Philippines and warned them about these men. The fraudsters
set up shop in an Edsa mall in a noodles shop before finding private rented
accommodation nearby.

In the meantime hotel security started questioning all its guests who had any links
to Olivares. Soon the tales of Tuguegarao City and chartered plane cons emerged.
It turned out that Olivares was not allowed back in the US (having spent several
months in Russia prior to showing up in Manila in early 2009) and that Wagner
had a history in the Philippines for exactly the same precious metals con and for
falsely claiming that he was a green beret way back in the 1990’s.

Hotel security informed the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation (their

version of the FBI) and the US Embassy in Manila about Olivares and Wagner
while the Australian embassy was not surprised to find out about Lance
Blancheflower. An investigation was launched and affidavits were passed to
victims of the Olivares con. Documents relating to chartered plane hiring and
email correspondence were passed to the Filipino authorities and yet meanwhile
Olivares continued to solicit business and invite yet more investors to Manila.
While the investigation continues, INTERPOL have been informed and US
authorities are investigating Olivares and Wagner after linking them to past
frauds.

Benjamin Olivares claims he is a director of a successful company registered in

the US by the name of Sullivan Kaplan Olivares Russo, Inc (the same company
caught up in the Pennsylvania securities fraud probe). He pretends he is a lawyer
but has no qualifications. He uses the entity the “Carmichael Group” (registered in
Panama - it is not) to pass literature related to gold and precious metals to
buyers. Even basic due diligence on Olivares shows his disreputable past.

Olivares’ group has conned many thousands off gullible buyers and
investors. Anyone with any information on any of the conmen and women
mentioned should please contact the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation
on Manila 523-8231or by email on info@nbi.gov.ph . Anyone with any past
dealings with fraudster Benjamin Olivares is asked to immediately notify the
Pennsylvania Securities Commission by calling 800-600-0007, or, in Harrisburg:
(717) 787-8062, in Pittsburgh: (412) 565-5083 or in Philadelphia: (215) 560-2088.