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'I FELL IN LOVE WITH A SWINDLER...'
AS TOLD TO MIMI LARDIZABAL COL-LONG
I ONCE led a charmed life. I had a flourishing garments business. I could buy luxuries.
Best of all, I had Carlo.
I design clothes so I put up the garments business with my best friend, Tricia. Her parents ran a security guard agency and they lent us the capital we needed for the business.
Carlo worked for a supplier of computers for our company. One day, he invited me to attend an exhibit of his company’s new computers and gadgets in Makati. Carlo warmly welcomed me, introduced me to his partners, and proudly showed me the new gizmos. When I was about to leave, he invited me for dinner.
During dinner, Carlo and I talked like we’d known each other for ages. I found out he went to a university near the college I went to. He was in his senior year when I was a sophomore.
The next day, before I left for the office, he called, inviting me for a dinner. I said yes, and since then, he was coming to the office-not to offer me new gadgets-but to pick me up for our dinner date.
During dinner, he often told me of his plans to put up his own business. He said he was not happy doing business with his partners and so he would soon put up his own company. Maybe a cyber cafe, he said.
He also spoke about his family. He said his dad, an engineer, his mom, a teacher, and his brother, an artist, all worked in Dubai and promised to send money as capital for Carlo’s cyber cafe.
The wife of his brother and their three children lived with Carlo in the family’s ancestral home in Manila which was only temporary because he said his brother plans to buy a house and lot for his family.
Carlo eventually cut ties with his business partners and started putting up his dream cyber cafe. His parents sent him money as starting capital.
He invested most of his savings in his business, he often had cash problems. One day, he told me his brother had not sent money for the tuition of his eldest daughter. I offered to lend him the money. He was apologetic and promised to pay me back.
Carlo did pay me back. From then on, sharing money became part of our relationship. He borrowed money from me, I willingly gave him cash. By this time, I was already madly in love with him.
We were already on our first year of relationship when he proposed to me. I was in high heavens. He said we should save for our big wedding. We agreed that he’d open a bank account for this purpose. So, from then on, I regularly gave him a portion of my earnings to save for our wedding. I know it’s crazy, but I so trusted him, I didn’t even bother to find out our account number.
Then, one day, Carlo didn’t call me for our regular dinner together. I called him at his cyber cafe and, to my surprise, the telephone operator said he had resigned.
Resigned? Isn’t he the owner of the cafe? How can he resign from his own company?
“Ma’am, he is not the owner of this cafe,” the operator told me. “He was our manager but he resigned last week.”
My heart thumped as I put down the phone. Quickly, I dialled his mobile number. It rang but he didn’t answer it. I dialled his home number. The phone didn’t even ring. I dialled again. Nothing. The phone must have been disconnected.
The whole day, I waited for Carlo to call me. He didn’t. I thought, he must be sick, or something terrible must have happened to him. So I immediately drove to his house. To my surprise, somebody else was living in the house. Carlo was not there. Neither was his sister-in-law or her children.
I couldn’t believe what was happening. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell my family my dilemma. When I got home, I called up Tricia and told her everything. She told my problem to her parents and they readily introduced me to a reliable detective agency which I hired to track down Carlo.
What the agency found out almost drove me crazy. First, Carlo did not separate from his partners in the computer company. They cut ties with him because he embezzled company funds and his partners had sued him for estafa. Second, Carlo’s parents and brother didn’t work in Dubai. His parents are farmers in Mindanao. He didn’t have a brother.
Third, and this was the worst. The sister-in-law was, in fact, his wife, and the nieces and nephews were actually his own children!
Yes, Carlo had fooled me. He was a swindler who took advantage of foolish me!
The man I so loved turned out to be evil, and I could only blame myself for falling into his trap. I cried and cried until I had no more tears to shed.
Until now, I still don’t know Carlo’s whereabouts. He broke my heart, crushed my ego.
Through it all, Tricia stood by me, running our business when I simply fell apart. Through her support, I am slowly healing.
I am writing this and I have allowed my story to be published so that women may be warned: that love-or what you think as love-may just turn out to be a nightmare.
Be careful.
Note: *Although events in this story are true, names of places and persons and some circumstances have been altered to protect the identity of those involved. Any similarity to actual names of places and persons, whether living or deceased, is purely coincidental.
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