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For the past 21 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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This website includes selected articles from this week's edition of the Filipino Express. Not all the stories published in the printed version appear on this site.
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MANILA-- Tables have been when the negotiator in the hostage crisis involving an ABS-CBN News crew and their guide in Sulu were indicted for kidnapping. Director General Avelino Razon Jr., Philippine National Police chief, said investigators have gathered enough evidence to establish the participation of Indanan town Mayor Alvarez Isnaji and his son, Haider, in the abduction of broadcast journalist Ces Drilon, cameramen Jimmy Encarnacion, Angelo Valderama and professor Octavio Dinampo.
"Our evaluation of statements from the victims and several witnesses all point to the participation of the Isnajis in the kidnapping of Ces Drilon and her crew staged by armed men, two of whom we have identified as Abu Harris and Tuan Wals," Razon said.
Isnaji and his son were presented by police before prosecutors of the Department of Justice in Camp Crame, Quezon City, for inquest proceedings. Both remain in police custody with no bail recommended for their temporary release.
Police, meanwhile, said the complete identities of several other suspects are now being validated by the PNP. Isnaji was hand-picked by the kidnappers as the "negotiator" for the hostages' release. Haider, on the other hand. was one of the "emissaries" to the kidnappers, Razon said.
The PNP chief, however, said that inconsistencies in the debriefing of the Isnajis led investigators to believe that both were actual participants in the kidnapping. This was further bolstered by statements from witnesses and other evidence gathered by the PNP.
The PNP chief gave hint of more arrests in the coming days, including another suspect who has direct hand knowledge of the involvement of the Isnajis.
'Surprised'
Earlier, the elder Isnaji insisted that he and his son were not involved in the abduction of the ABS-CBN News crew and their guide last week in Indanan, Sulu province.
"I was surprised. I [gave] them hope," he said.
He also denied that the ransom money that was supposedly paid for the victims' release went to his pockets and his campaign kitty for the August elections in the Autunomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. "That's not true. That's [the] allegation of some politicians who are jealous of me."
He added that he and his son should be rewarded for negotiating for the release of the television crew. "I thought I should be given reward or what," he said.
Haider, meanwhile, suspects that he and his father are caught between a raging political war. "Ces must know better. Maybe we are just caught in the middle between political in the country," he said.
The younger Isnaji appealed to the government to reconsider its decision to file charges against his father.
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JERSEY CITY– The staff of the hospital where the late Ruth Sigue worked, is hardly back to normal after the astounding news that gripped the employees last Monday, however, the hospital is running business as usual.
The restaurant where Peter Ng left his two kids is back to its normal routine: Customers come in, order their meals and eat in corner tables while watching their favorite Filipino shows on TV.
The Filipino community in New Jersey, though still reeling from the shock of Monday’s tragedy, is moving on.
Last Monday. Peter Ng’s ashes where flown back to Singapore. As of now, the relatives of Ruth Sigue are still finding ways to raise the money needed to ship her remains back to Cebu.
11 days after the brutal death of Ruth Sigue, the suicide of Peter Ng, and the abandonment of their two daughters, more questions abound: How was their marital relationship? What got them here in the US? Was there any credence to Ng’s suspicion that his wife was seeing another man?
The Singapore Straits Times reported that Ng’s mother never suspected anything wrong with his 58-year old son, who regularly called here from New Jersey, until a few days before that tragic Monday. She said that she noticed something different in his son’s voice the last time he called, however, her son did not say anything bothering him then.
“If he had told me he believed she was having an affair with a colleague, I would have advised him to take things in his stride and try to work things through with more communication," Ng’s mother said.
Peter Ng, according to his friends in Singapore, left the country, and everything he has when Ruth decided to migrate to the US for a nursing job in 2005. While Ruth was earning $5,000 a-month at Somerset Medical Center, Ng worked several odd jobs and never really got a stable job that could provide a steady income. The Singapore Straits Times also reported that when Ng’s friend Steven Lee learned about Ng’s plan to move to the US in 2005, he was worried. Lee thought that Ng would have a hard time looking for a good job given his age.
While in New Jersey, Ng, according to one of their NJ friends, seemed to be a sweet husband. He did all the house chores while Ruth worked in the hospital. He was also viewed as a devoted father to his two little daughters, whom he later abandoned before killing himself in a blind rage. Ng also left two grown up children in Singapore from a previous marriage.
Based from observations by the couple’s friends and acquaintances, their relationship appeared normal. Nothing signaled anything wrong with the family even days before their deaths. Hence, the utter shock that they felt when they read the news.
What made this 58-year old Singaporean national pick up a kitchen knife, plunge it on her beloved wife’s chest several times, ripping it open until she bled to death? What caused this man to abandon his two little girls and jump to his death in the Hudson? Is there any veracity to his claim that his wife was having an affair?
For all we know, he could be a deranged, paranoid, and delusional husband, who loathed his life in the US, settling for menial jobs, while his wife earns good income. On the other hand, he could be an honest, loving husband and father, who could not accept the truth that his wife whom he sacrificed his life for, was simply tired of him.
We will never know.
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CHICAGO – A 68-yearold Filipina nurse had complained of having “right shoulder pain” and “left knee pain” in mid-March of 2005. But emergency doctors at the Swedish Covenant Hospital in Chicago, Illinois had discharged her as having “gouty arthritis.”
Because the emergency staff, led by Dr. Paul Newskow, failed to promptly diagnose and treat septic arthritis and aspirate the left knee and failed to appreciate laboratory findings as consistent with infection, the “negligent acts” caused Rosemary Mittenthal “conscious pain, suffering and permanent disability and injury, which continues to the present day.” It turned out that Ms. Mittenthal had meningitis that was left undiagnosed for three days, according to her lawyer, Mark McNabola.
Reached for comment by this reporter, Mr. McNabola refused to elaborate, saying in an email, “I am sorry but the family does not want to receive any unnecessary notoriety.”
Last June 4th, the Swedish Covenant agreed to pay her $7.8 million to settle her negligence lawsuit.
According to records obtained by this reporter from the Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago, when Ms. Mittenthal was rushed to the emergency room “for pain management,” the “orthopedic surgeon felt this was not consistent with osteoarthritis and alternative medications were given.”
A call back to the emergency department resulted in generation of second pain prescription. Patient’s pain progressed thru Easter Sunday, which had gotten so bad that the patient required assistance to get in and out of bed and she was unable to perform her usual independent activity.
The following morning, the patient was in such extraordinary pain and unable to mobilize herself that her husband, Robert, called 9-1-1, and Ms. Mittenthal was taken to the Swedish Covenant Hospital on March 29, 2005.
She was later diagnosed to have “septic joint with meningitis and sepsis,” and “complex non-traumatic brain and spinal cord injury.”
She later became “dependent for all aspects of self-care and mobility (eating, grooming, bathing, dressing, and toileting, as well as all transfers),” “dependent at the wheel-chair level and had moderate to severe deficits for social interaction, problem solving, comprehensive and expression.”
She now “requires 24- hour assistance for all care.”
Ms. Mittenthal was an active community leader several years ago. She ran but lost for the presidency of the Filipino American Council of Greater Chicago (FACC), a community umbrella group in Chicagoland area. (lariosa_jos@sbcglobal)
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CHICAGO– An American president and chief executive officer of a Philippine registered Health Visions Corporation (HVC) based in Olongapo City in the Philippines was sentenced Tuesday (June 17th) to serve five years in prison for defrauding a U.S. government agency more than $100-M in phony health claims.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter M. Jarosz for the Western District of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin told this reporter over the phone that Thomas Arthur Lutz, 41, got a deferred sentence to give him time to liquidate the assets of HVC so he and the company can repay therestitution amounting to $99-M. He will start doing time on March 18, 2009.
Lutz, whose wife is a Filipina, was sentenced for mail fraud by Chief Judge Barbara B. Crabb of the United States District Court of Western District of Wisconsin in Madison. Last April 24, 2008, Judge Crabb also sentenced the Health Visions Corporation also for mail fraud to liquidate all of its assets and pay $99,915,131 in restitution, $500,000 fine, and forfeit $910,910.60. The corporation was placed on probation and was given ten months to liquidate its assets.
Health Visions was also ordered to enter into a consent decree in which all its officers, directors, and employees agree to a permanent exclusion as a TRICARE provider and any other government program. The corporation pleaded guilty to the fraud charge on May 25, 2007, and the Court sealed the plea agreement to allow Health Visions to begin the liquidation of their assets.
Lutz pleaded guilty on Dec. 11, 2006 to Count 33 participating in a conspiracy with Health Visions and a physician in the Philippines to double bill TRICARE and kickback the inflated payments to Health Visions. He also agreed to assist the government in its investigation.
On July 15, 2005, a federal grand jury sitting in Madison returned a 75-count superseding indictment against Health Visions and Lutz. The indictment charged the corporation and Lutz with defrauding the TRICARE Program. TRICARE, formerly known as CHAMPUS, is the United States' Department of Defense's worldwide health care program for active duty and retired uniformed services members and their families.
The charges were brought in the Western District of Wisconsin because Wisconsin Physicians Service (WPS), the fiscal intermediary and a TRICARE subcontractor which processed and paid these fraudulent claims, is located in Madison, which is within the jurisdiction of Wisconsin’s Western District.
The charges against the corporation and Lutz arose from their conduct between Oct. 1, 1998 and August 2004, when they drew up a plan to defraud the federal TRICARE program in which Lutz, on behalf of Health Visions, entered into a kickback agreement with a medical provider in the Philippines. The provider, at the request of Lutz, paid 50% of the amount of the bills for medical services rendered to TRICARE patients referred by Health Visions back to the corporation. Also, the Health Visions and Lutz inflated the bills of other providers by one hundred percent or more before submitting the bills for payment by the United States government.
The defendants also created a sham insurance program to circumvent TRICARE's requirement that beneficiaries pay a deductible and cost share, and they also submitted fictitious and fraudulent TRICARE claims falsely claiming that beneficiaries had been hospitalized and had rendered services when, in reality, they had not.
Erick C. Peterson, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin, said in a press statement that, "This conviction furthers our goal to protect the TRICARE program. Our veterans deserve quality health care, and our nation deserves a program free from fraud. We will continue to vigorously investigate these cases."
Part of the scheme involved Health Visions, directing WPS to send payments for all the TRICARE claims to a lockbox account in the name of HVC at Bank of America in Columbia, Missouri. When the account reached $1-M, Lutz's brother directed the BA in Missouri to wire transfer funds from HVC account at BA to an HVC bank account at United Cocoa (sic) Planters Bank in Manila in $1-M increments.
Between 1998 and 2004, WPS paid over $163-M in total TRICARE claims submitted by HVC. Of this amount, $144.6-M came from third-party billing by HVC and $18.7-M came from direct billing from HVC owned hospitals.
Jarosz said at least five hospitals, one of them in Iloilo, in the Philippines were involved in the scam. A similar scam is being investigated in other countries. Among them are Mexico, Panama and Costa Rica. (lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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