Bacolod City police director, Senior Supt. Pedro Merced, yesterday released the cartographic sketches of the two con-artists who swindled a prominent Bacolod lawyer and civic leader at Burgos Street in the city Wednesday.

Merced said the helper of lawyer Luz Dato-Lacson was able to give the facial descriptions of the swindlers who approached and transacted "business" with the lawyer and were able to take about P3 million in cash and jewelry from her.

The mestizo-looking man who approached Lacson and told her he was a sea captain with a doctor-daughter married to an Australian millionaire who wanted to buy property, is about 50 years old, of medium build and has a fair complexion, Merced said.

He weighs about 135 pounds, looked decent in his dark green polo shirt and dark brown short pants. He also speaks Tagalog fluently, he added.

The second man who identified himself as "Benigno Yapsingco", is between 60 to 65 years old, of medium build and has a dark brown complexion. He stands 5 feet and 5 inches tall and weighs about 140 to 150 pounds, Merced said.

Yapsingco speaks Tagalog with a Cebuano accent. He also looked decent in his white polo shirt and dark colored pants. He had claimed to need help to buy pumps for his fishing boats and to rent a box in a bank vault to deposit the P1.8 million he claimed to have in the black bag he was carrying.

Meanwhile, Merced said he directed Senior Insp. Ulysses Ortiz, Police Precinct 4 commander to coordinate with Jennifer Ong of Lopez-Jaena, Bacolod City, who called Lacson and described one of the swindlers to her.

Ong had earlier said that one of the men who swindled Lacson seems to be the same man who, with his wife, used to be boarders in her house. She said she did not trust the couple, and told them to leave her house. They later boarded in the house next to hers.

Ong said the wife had sweet-talked many people in her neighborhood, including her grandmother, to lend her money, but did not pay them. The couple disappeared from their neighborhood when Lacson was swindled, she added.

Lacson, 79, lost more than P2 million of jewelry, some of them irreplaceable heirlooms, $10,000 and P65,000 in cash to the two men who approached her at the Burgos Public Market area Wednesday.*DMG

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