against the accused before the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).[2] On 15 August 1997 PNP Senior Inspector Ligaya Cabal of the POEA-CIG Task Force Anti-Illegal Recruitment spearheaded a police operation to entrap the accused. Elements of the PNP together with some members of the media proceeded to Ermita Building and placed it under surveillance. Police Officer Cabal, who was in civilian clothes, went alone to the office of the accused in the third floor and posed as a job applicant. The accused inquired if she was applying as there was a vacancy for chambermaid in Brunei. When Officer Cabal answered yes, the accused forthwith furnished her bio-data and visa application forms and instructed her to fill them up. [3] Officer Cabal promptly accomplished the bio-data and application forms. To obviate any suspicion on the part of the accused as to her true identity, she used the assumed name "Joy S. Garcia."[4] The accused then required Officer Cabal to pay the initial amount of P1,500.00 for medical and processing fees. At the instruction of the accused, a certain Teresita Reyoberos received the marked money from Officer Cabal and issued the corresponding receipt therefor.[5] The police dragnet having been laid, Officer Cabal with the use of her cellular phone made the pre-arranged signal to the police operatives waiting outside the building that the marked money had been delivered. [6] Accused Lourdes Gamboa and Teresita Reyoberos were thus apprehended, but the rest of their cohorts eluded arrest and remained at large. Later, however, Teresita Reyoberos was not included in the criminal information after State Prosecutor Zenaida M. Lim found that she was also a job applicant at the office of the accused who merely acceded to the request of accused Melba Mioza to temporarily man the office in her absence.[7] Consequently, only Lourdes Gamboa was hailed to court and indicted for Illegal Recruitment in Large Scale. In convicting accused-appellant Lourdes Gamboa of the crime charged, the trial court held - x x x x the proofs adduced by the prosecution have clearly and conclusively demonstrated that the accused, conspiring and confederating with three others, has offered, enlisted and promised overseas employment to [complainants]. Against the mass of evidence arrayed by the prosecution, all that the accused could offer was her bare and unconfirmed denials and explanation x x x x The court, however, is not inclined to uphold and sustain the denials and explanations of the accused, which are negative in character and self-serving in nature. Her unconfirmed version cannot, certainly, outweigh and command greater evidentiary measure than the overwhelming testimonies of the Peoples principal witnesses, who narrated in vivid and clear-cut details the various aspects of her recruitment and placement activities. x x x x the evidence for the People has likewise conclusively established that the accused is neither personally licensed nor authorized by the POEA to recruit workers for overseas employment (Exhibit B). Although the defense has shown that the license and authority of the Bemil Management Trading and Manpower Services to recruit,