4/30/2021 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly of Thirty Thousand Pesos (P30,000.00). These acts of the appellant certainly militate against her claim that she did not actually receive and benefit from the amounts that she collected from the said private complainants. The appellant cannot pretend having merely accommodated Gloria de Leon for the amount of Sixty Five Thousand Pesos (P65,000.00) which is the total amount of her two (2) BPI checks payable to Rodrigo Acorda inasmuch as her checking account in the BPI has already been closed when private complainant Rodrigo Acorda attempted to encash the checks in the said drawee bank. What appears clear then is that the appellant never really intended to settle her account with the said private complainant. Her issuance of the two (2) BPI checks was merely a ploy intended to dissuade the said private complainant from filing a case against her. Consequently, in the light of these established facts, the appellant is guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crimes of three (3) counts of estafa and one count of illegal recruitment in large scale. Under Article 39(a) of the Labor Code, the appellant should suffer, in the case of illegal recruitment in large scale, the penalty of life imprisonment and a fine of One Hundred Thousand Pesos (P100,000.00). In addition, she is liable to indemnify the private complainants in the amounts which they respectively paid to her. It is well-settled that a person who has committed illegal recruitment may be charged and convicted separately of the crime of illegal recruitment under the Labor Code and estafa under paragraph 2(a) of Article 315 of the Revised Penal Code.[29] The reason for the rule is that the crime of illegal recruitment is malum prohibitum where the criminal intent of the accused is not necessary for conviction, while the crime of estafa is malum in se where the criminal intent of the accused is necessary for conviction. In other words, a person convicted under the Labor Code may also be convicted of offenses punishable by other laws.[30] Article 315 of the Revised Penal Code provides that: Art. 315. Swindling (estafa).- Any person who shall defraud another by any of the means mentioned hereinbelow shall be punished by: 1st. The penalty of prision correccional in its maximum period to prision mayor in its minimum period, if the amount of the fraud is over 12,000 but does not exceed 22,000 pesos, and if such amount exceeds the latter sum, the penalty provided in this paragraph shall be imposed in its maximum period, adding one year for each additional 10,000 pesos; but the total penalty which may be imposed shall not exceed twenty years. In such case, and in connection with the accessory penalties which may be imposed and for the purpose of the other provisions of this Code, the penalty shall be termed prision mayor or reclusion temporal, as the case may be. 2nd. The penalty of prision correccional in its minimum and medium periods, if the amount of the fraud is over 6,000 pesos but does not exceed 12,000 pesos. https://elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/52399 7/12