A criminal group engaged in altering and forging postal money order checks in Oriental Negros has been neutralized, the provincial police office said yesterday.

PNP provincial director, Sr. Supt. Melvin Ramon Buenafe, said the Mabinay police, in coordination with representatives from the Philippine Postal Corporation in Manila, the regional postal officer, and the district postal inspector busted what could have been another attempt to encash altered money order checks in the mountain municipality of Mabinay, over the weekend.

Philippine Postal Corporation representatives sought the help of the Mabinay Police station about the existence of the group on March 24 and immediately informed big stores.

Two days later, a certain Bienvenido Safra Broce, 36, married, of San Carlos City, Negros Occidental, and presently residing at Sitio Mabaha, Barangay Mayaposi, Mabinay, along with a companion were spotted at the Hanelyn Grocery Store and in the act of encashing falsified documents.

In an entrapment, Broce yielded seven pieces of altered and forged PMO checks with a total amount of P3,000.

However, the alleged mastermind, Edmund Bayot, also of San Carlos City eluded the police dragnet.

Formal charges were readied against the suspects, police added.*JG

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