The Biggest Electoral Crime of the Century: WAC's Infiltration and the Unraveling of the COMELEC
"At around 4:00 PM we opened the back of the mini-truck and saw that it was filled with boxes. There were five boxes of black PCOS machines and around twenty boxes of election papers - printed COMELEC ballots similar to what they use in the precincts. We took each box and carried them inside the apartment..."
- Jason (alias), Remote PCOS Operator
PART ONE: OF MOLES AND SADO-MASOCHISTS
People wanted us dead.
Hackers were hired and infiltrators were deliberately planted to spy on us and find out who we are.
That comes as no surprise after everything we’ve exposed about Leni Robredo and her cohorts in the abomination that is the Liberal Party. Not only that, we also named Robredo's dummies, thieving politicians, corrupt police generals, drug lords, hitmen, gambling lords, and pretty much every single crook and scoundrel who consorted and rubbed elbows with the usurper.
To say that these people simply wanted us dead would be an understatement. These rogues and reprobates shared a common interest not only in seeing us literally extinguished from the face of the earth, they also stand to profit from the destruction of the WAC brand. These infiltrators were unleashed not just to hunt us down, but to discredit and disparage our exposés as well.
All these risks are inevitably part of the terrain. We knew this since the day we signed up for the Collective. What came as a shock, however, was what we discovered after catching the moles who infiltrated us.
Now this may sound like a tired cliché, but truly, one thing does lead to another. What started out as an internal security problem for WAC turned out to be a complete blessing in disguise. Indeed, fortuitous things seem to happen out of the most unlikely circumstances.
Juan Miguel Suarez III was never on our radar.
He sent me an invite on Facebook and upon seeing that he is friends with a good number of pro-DDS bloggers, I did not hesitate to accept his friend request. He even joined Assembly Uno (AU), the social media springboard we were using to form a socio-political group that will carry our advocacies out in the open. I kept seeing his posts on my news feed, learned that he joined one of the clusters that an admin formed inside Assembly Uno, and had the impression that he was quite savvy about computers, especially after seeing repetitive posts of himself brandishing the take-down of a few yellow-aligned pages like Madam Claudia and Resbak Operatives. Rene Rebutiaco, the admin of his cluster in AU who uses the handle Marcelo Green, told me that his group was indeed responsible for the take-down of these pages. I didn’t care enough to ask how they did it. To me it didn’t matter. Those pages were insignificant. I just didn’t give a rat’s fuck.
In the interest of transience and brevity I will no longer dwell on the specific details that led to the establishment of Assembly Uno. You can back read our previous posts for you to get an idea of why it was necessary for us to take this fight to the next level and organize. We needed leverage, and it became clear to us that the only way to accomplish this is to slowly grow out of our confines that is social media. We set up an admin group composed of nine volunteers from among those who signed up to help us moderate the group page. Later a chat group was created for these admins and this was how we interacted with them. There was no other mode of communication established between WAC Central (the original Team Collective) and the newly appointed group admins aside from this chat thread. Ample vetting was made (most of these admins were friends of DDS personalities we trusted), yet we were also aware that since we were operating in a virtual landscape, where physical interaction was mostly absent and people moved in different time zones, no amount of vetting will ever be sufficient to really give us absolute comfort. This is the age of the internet and social media, and people can easily hide behind fake profiles and anonymous accounts and craft new virtual personas depending on a wide array of possible motivations. We did so because of the dangers we faced. The same could be done by our enemies to spy on us and track us down.
During the first stages of Assembly Uno we gave the admins a free hand in managing the group page. We purposely took a low profile since we were busy silently observing the group dynamics. What we were attempting to do was unprecedented. How do you form a massive socio-political group from something as fluid and volatile as social media? We had big dreams for the Collective, and since what we are doing has never been attempted before, at least not to the scale that we envisioned, we have to admit that Assembly Uno was practically a social experiment in progress. We even brought in a resident sociologist to help us observe and take note of the virtual social dynamics of the group we established. This in order to give us a better vantage point on how we will effectively manage a virtual group from plain scratch. Everything was being carefully studied. And certain mishaps and failures were necessarily part of this social experiment.
Our resident social scientist warned us enough from the get go. Take a group of random people together and put them in a single space to interact with each other (doesn't matter if the space is virtual or physical), and it would only be a matter of time before they start squabbling and clawing at each other. Human nature he says. We took his advice as fair warning and decided to proceed with guarded optimism. After all, everything seems impossible until it is done. There was a lot of room for us to continuously learn and evolve. I even told my colleagues at WAC Central: What do have to lose? When was the last time we ever did something for the first time?
Aside from a few very minor issues and setbacks, everything seemed normal. Then came Rene Rebutiaco’s folly. We have gotten reports that he has been soliciting and collecting money from AU members privately using WAC’s name. One member (a Hong Kong based OFW in particular) apparently sent Php 7,500 to Rene Rebutiaco (Marcelo Green) since the latter allegedly solicited money from her for what appears to be a “fundraising” project initiated by some of the admins in WAC’s name. The same member claimed she was not the only one who sent money. The latter also declared that she thought she was sending money directly to us, which was a serious breach in protocol since WAC Central was not even actively soliciting money on its own nor gave express consent to any of the admins to do so. We set up a Paypal donate button in our website and posted it in the WAC page once, after all we needed help to sustain our logistical needs especially now that we are organizing, yet upon realizing that a lot of people didn't have credit or debit cards (a necessity for online fund transfers), we stopped soliciting funds altogether until a system is in place so we can accept voluntary donations from our followers.
A complete rundown of the specific details that surrounded this particular event can be read in the following CG (chat group) transcript: [Scribd] (A note to this transcript: Since admin Jassee White was the one who downloaded a copy of this convo - as WAC Communications Head, her name does not appear in the chat thread. The entries in pink are Jassee's comments.)
I decided to address the issue with dispatch and called for a meeting with the admins to give Rene Rebutiaco the opportunity to air his side and pass an immediate verdict after factoring in all the variables that led to this infraction. There were simply a lot of things we needed to accomplish and issues like this had to be treated with utmost expediency or it will escalate to an even bigger problem that can either slow us down or lead to our eventual ruin.
As you will see in the transcript, other things started to unravel after we axed Rebutiaco. Another admin whose name is Lourdes de las Cagigas started acting defensively in a rather odd manner (since she wasn’t even the one being held to account) and managed to somewhat coopt the other admins to turn against each other by hurling wild baseless accusations about each other’s intent. I temporarily left the chat thread upon seeing them throw insinuations against each other and felt that the discussion had gone down to a level that was beneath me. When I returned, I started typing a rather lengthy appeal to all of the admins (you may see a transcript of this here) reminding them of why we bonded together when all of a sudden De las Cagigas began removing other admins from the chat board and deleted the whole thread!
I was dumbstruck. Why would De las Cagigas do something like that? So I proceeded to admonish her by messaging her privately and was even more surprised that she lied to me about erasing the chat group (See transcript of our private conversation here). This is when I realized something was seriously wrong. For a while now, strange things have been happening to our FB accounts and we had a strange feeling that we were being hacked since we started Assembly Uno (a lot of these were discussed openly in the AU admin thread). Cagigas claimed she had a niece working at Facebook, and exhibited a rather unusual proficiency in internet technology and Facebook navigation techniques despite her seniority (she was the oldest among the AU admins at 60). At a certain point we were already closely monitoring everyone as we suspected something was amiss yet it was Cagigas’ action (deleting the thread and lying about it) that ultimately convinced us that she is not who she presented herself to be.
We decided to investigate further when another admin based in Norway, Gigit Weddjegerde, one of those we felt may have been initially influenced by Cagigas, finally came to her senses and sent us several screenshots (see them below) that seem to prove that Cagigas was acting in conspiracy with another admin – a fellow Bicolano from Albay who goes by the name of Kitz Barja – to twist things and launch a demolition job against WAC. Barja was also being closely monitored since we have gotten previous reports from the other admins that he seemed busy fishing for information about the people behind WAC Central. Barja wasn’t around for most of the time and he even left the admin group once after a poorly staged drama that he found out he was remotely related to Loida Lewis, the billionaire Filipino-American financier of Leni Robredo and the LP (see transcript here). Barja left and came back later using a different account – an anonymous profile named Juan Miguel Jacinto which turns out to be the account of another person – his friend Juan Miguel Suarez III. At the time this private convo between the conspirators was happening, both Barja and Suarez were unaware that they were already in our sights. Only Cagigas was outed when these screenshots were taken.
Following are screenshots of the private messages sent to me by Barja announcing his departure from the admin page and a friend request from his "new" account - Juan Miguel Jacinto:
Former AU admin Kitz Barja
So while we were discussing, planning and strategizing in the chat group, Suarez can now also see the whole convo since it was his account (Juan Miguel Jacinto) that Barja used to regain access to the chat group. And we had no idea that it was he who owned the account instead of Kitz Barja. Suarez didn't get to us through some advanced hacking techniques, he got in when Barja switched accounts and used his. This was classic infiltration of the highest order. And it was proven by the screenshots sent to us by Gigit that Cagigas and Barja were conspiring against WAC together with this guy Suarez. They even mentioned Jim Paredes in their private convo (Paredes’ wife Lydia also happens to be a close personal friend of Cagigas).
Lourdes De las Cagigas (far left) with her friend Lydia Paredes (far right)
Cagigas (in the middle) with friends. Lydia Paredes sits beside her (far right)
Jim Paredes with his wife Lydia
The screenshots constituted clear evidence of Cagigas’ and Barja’s treachery and subterfuge. But what about this guy Suarez? Who the hell is he? Why was he spying on us? Who could have sent him and Barja and instructed them to infiltrate Assembly Uno?
Juan Miguel Suarez III
From the onset, we reminded everyone who decided to sign up with us: We will trust everyone, let people in, filter as we go along, be transparent as much as we possibly can despite our anonymity, but a warning was sufficiently given that no one should ever attempt to mess with WAC Central. We have a wide intelligence network at our disposal and investigative capabilities at par with military standards. And since a serious security breach was undertaken that could potentially compromise our security, we had no choice but to deal with the issue the only way it should be dealt with – by launching our own counter-intelligence. Despite lapses in our part that led to the infiltration, we stuck close to our mantra: The best defense is always a good offense.
It didn’t take long before we found out who Suarez is. After a couple of days we already had his personal history, career background, financial history, list of associates, and even his multiple FB accounts, home address and private personal numbers. Even a list of people he swindled. It turns out, Suarez is a nephew of the current House Minority Leader, Congressman Danilo Suarez of Quezon Province, and is a rather notorious guy who swindles his own friends and relatives, fashions himself to be an expert hacker, and engages in a number of dubious activities and shady dealings. The biggest surprise, however, is that Suarez turns out to be previously connected with Smartmatic-TIM and was a PCOS operator whose clientele included the LP Senators who ran in 2013 and 2016 – among them, Risa Hontiveros, Frank Drilon and Leila De Lima (2016) and Hontiveros and Bam Aquino (in 2013).
What started out as a hunt for those who infiltrated us turned out to be an amazing catch!
Following are screenshots that will prove that Suarez is exactly who we accuse him to be. We got these screenshots from a confidential informant who worked with Suarez in a similar capacity as a remote PCOS operator in 2016, albeit belonging to a different camp. Suarez was working for the LP while our source belonged to the Poe-Escudero camp. Now that came as another surprise. Not only were the yellows rigging the vote in their favor using guys like Suarez III, Poe and Escudero were in it as well! They were bidding for the machines together with the yellows, and they were using the same SMARTMATIC brokers and contacts! The COMELEC and Smartmatic held private biddings for the Super PCOS machines (that is what our informant called these contraptions), each of which had the ability to deliver between 50,000 - 100,000 votes in favor of the operator’s candidate.
Note: Suarez' entries appear in white, while our informant's messages appear in blue.
Looking at the flow of their private convo, which was made in April 1 of this year, long before we even established Assembly Uno and caught Suarez in our radar, you will get a bird's eye view of how the syndicate worked. Suarez and our informant talked about a lot of things. About allegedly not getting paid, people disappearing and possibly getting killed, amounts given to them as earnest money, the number of provinces covered... there were even mentions of certain personalities involved.
In our previous posts we announced that we were doing a piece on the COMELEC-Smartmatic syndicate as we were preparing to release the third installment of the Deception series and another bombshell piece on Noynoy Aquino when recent turn of events compelled us to release this earlier than we originally planned.
Last week, Patricia Bautista, the estranged wife of COMELEC Chair Juan Andres “Andy” Bautista came out accusing her husband of having 1.3 billion pesos worth of cash, properties and deposits that no sane mind can ever hope to possibly justify no matter what kind of advanced and complex arithmetic you use [Inq]. She had with her passbooks, checks and other damning documents that she presented to the press together with her affidavit [Scribd].
COMELEC Chairman Andres "Andy" Bautista and his wife Patricia
How could it have been possible for someone like Bautista to amass such ridiculous amounts given his present disposition as COMELEC Chairman? As we said in the beginning of this piece, one thing does lead to another. Bautista is turning the tables against his wife, yet he can hardly explain the source of his recently publicized wealth. Amidst rumors of his sexual proclivities and alleged perversions (a bullwhip was reportedly discovered by his wife along with his stash), Bautista has to explain and convincingly justify how and where he could have possibly gotten his billions.
And thanks to Juan Miguel Suarez III and his accomplices Barja and De las Cagigas, we found ourselves exactly where they least hoped we would be - in the fringes of their most likely patrons, the fake Vice-President Leni Robredo and the LP. Now Leni and the yellows are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface are the inner workings of a gigantic syndicate with a clout of far-reaching proportions. This syndicate does not owe allegiance to any particular party. Parties and politicians owe allegiance to it. It's reach and clientele covers all sides of the political landscape - from senators, congressmen, governors, mayors, councilors all the way up to the second highest position in the land.
The list of personalities involved is simply unimaginable if not outright shocking.
The unraveling begins.
Next:
PART 2: OPERATORS
