By Senior Columnist Joel Bander and the PWD Investigative Team
Additional reporting by Managing Editor Rene Villaroman
On Sunday, July 22, 2012, I sent Darna Umayam a simple email that included “make the clarion call to your supporters to stop the thievery” of PinoyWatchDog.com from the newsstands.
In response, Umayam wrote, “Your writers must be ashamed of themselves. They are the talk of the town why???
They must remember that Jew or Hudyo killed Jesus Christ???
Judas Iscariot the apostle who betrayed Jesus is a JEW like you!!!!!!!”
How did this all happen?
PinoyWatchDog.com readers know that Umayam first hit our Expose pages on June 23, 2012, that the “100 Outstanding Fil-Ams in the U.S.” was a ‘pay to play’ event, whereby the awardees were paying $1000 to receive the award, with many honorees being kept secret and a large amount of Umayam’s friends as recipients. On July 7, 2012, PWD wrote how the alleged criteria for awardees were their philanthropic activities, and confirmed the $1000 amount. That same issue revealed that Umayam had long been claiming she graduated Cum Laude from University Santo Tomas in the Philippines, which could not be certified by the university.
On July 7, 2012, PinoyWatchDog.com started disappearing from the newspaper racks beyond the papers popularity. In short, they were being stolen.
The next day, July 8, 2012, I wrote to Umayam about this matter and she responded to me “ Maybe people sympathize with me for what you are doing. They are putting your newspaper in the trash to where it belongs.”
The next issue came out on July 21, 2012, which revealed that Umayam hijacked the very charity that was the basis for Saturday’s dinner from the 2009 Independence Day Committee, as well as many other questionable transactions from that event. PWD also revealed that only $7500 from over $100,000 in revenue was actually going to the designated charity, and that Umayam was secretly planning to pay other charities that contributors had no idea about.
That evening, I received reports of papers being stolen again. The next day, July 22, 2012, I wrote to Umayam and stated that the newspapers were “never stolen when we wrote about Balita and Beirne, they are only stolen now when you are the issue … I have your email text supporting the effort. We now have source that you encouraged the papers to be taken en mass.
It is now time now to:
1. stop the thievery
2. make the clarion call to your supporters to stop the thievery.
We will lay out the facts, and let the readers decide.
Be a responsible community leader.
In response Ms. Umayam stated:
“Why don’t you show them you are supporting me and write something nice about me and the event in your newspaper , maybe the community will be very thankful to you, and we will all be happy in the end. . Then, that is the time I will make an appeal to the community to stop them from getting your newspaper, If ever they really are getting it. I have no idea. I have received hundreds of calls and emails from all places everywhere comforting me and telling me they don’t believe in all your accusations. They have also told me whatever steps and decision I will make regarding this matter, they will be supporting me all the way. I will not make an appeal to the community to stop stealing your Pinoywatchdog. I was about to do it to put a stop on all this. But you still continue to hit me below the belt. I will just do what I think is right”…
Numerous people I have shown these passages to, along with ‘maybe people sympathize with me for what you are doing. They are putting your newspaper in the trash to where it belongs’ passage, along with the most troubling anti-Semitic remarks, conclude that Darna Umayam is behind the theft of these newspapers.
PinoyWatchDog.com readers, what do you think?
Posted by PinoyWatchDog.com
on August 23, 2012. Filed under IN THE NEWS.
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