6/7/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly being essentially self-serving and easy to contrive. Their being the usual recourse of persons like the accused-appellant who are haled in court to answer for criminal charges of illegal recruitment further diminishes their worthiness and credit. Both the courts below unanimously found that the accused-appellant had misrepresented to the complainants her capacity to send workers abroad for employment. Believing her misrepresentation, they parted with their money for her to process their deployment papers. It was established that she did not have the necessary license or authority to engage in recruitment in the Province of Pangasinan, including the Cities of Dagupan, San Carlos and Urdaneta, a fact duly attested to by a competent employee of the Department of Labor and Employment. In this connection, the Prosecution did not even need to establish that she had not been issued any license or authority to lawfully engage in the recruitment and placement of workers. Under the law, even a licensee or holder of the authority to engage in recruitment who failed to reimburse the amounts received as placement or related fees upon her failure to deploy the victim could be criminally liable for the crime. It was observed in People v. Ocden: [16] x x x Section 6 of Republic Act No. 8042 enumerates particular acts which would constitute illegal recruitment whether committed by any person, whether a non-licensee, non-holder, licensee or holder of authority. Among such acts, under Section 6(m) of Republic Act No. 8042, is the [f]ailure to reimburse expenses incurred by the worker in connection with his documentation and processing for purposes of deployment, in cases where the deployment does not actually take place without the workers fault. Since illegal recruitment under Section 6(m) can be committed by any person, even by a licensed recruiter, a certification on whether Ocden had a license to recruit or not, is inconsequential. x x x. The State fully discharged its burden of proof by establishing the concurrence of the aforestated elements of the crime charged with moral certainty. Consequently, the proof of guilt of the accused was beyond reasonable doubt. Proof beyond reasonable doubt does not mean such a degree of proof as, excluding possibility of error, produces absolute certainty, for only moral certainty is required, or that degree of proof which produces conviction in an unprejudiced mind.[17] The judgment of the RTC, as affirmed by the CA, ordered the accused-appellant to pay the complainants actual damages of P6,500.00 each with legal interest from the filing of the information until fully paid. We uphold the payment of actual damages in that amount and legal interest. It is true that actual damages, to be recoverable, must not only be capable of proof, but must also be proved with a reasonable degree of certainty, for the courts cannot simply rely on speculation, conjecture or guesswork in determining the fact and amount of damages. The courts have thus generally required competent proof of the actual amount of loss, and for this reason have denied claims of actual damages not supported by receipts.[18] Such policy has eliminated the fabrication of claims for actual elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/63739 6/10