Senator Antonio Trillanes IV has been known as an opposition to the current administration, alongside Senator Leila De Lima. However, both senators might just have another thing in common – to fall victim to the claims in fake news sites about having relatives or employees getting caught for transporting drugs.
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Just recently, articles surfaced about two of Trillanes’ employees being arrested for bringing drugs at the airport. They were also posted by Facebook fan pages supporting President Rodrigo Duterte and former Senator Bongbong Marcos. In fact, the article shared by “Rodrigo Duterte Support Page by Dr Eli Alegad FRCPC, FACP” and “Duterte News Global” was even shared 1,100 times and reacted to 1,500 times.
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But when we clicked on the link that these pages shared, we were directed to the fake news site philstar.i-telecast.com. Based on the article, Trillanes’ men – Edgar Ramirez and Glenn Silverio – were caught in NAIA on Thursday at 7 p.m. At first, both men even claimed they were unemployed, although further checking of their luggage revealed that they actually worked for Trillanes.
The article also pointed to Ramirez as Trillanes’ Head of Social Media and Silverio as the senator’s Executive Assistant.
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NAIA Operations Director Octavio Lina allegedly said that the two men were seen weeks ago at the airport engaging in a “suspicious activity” but they did not have enough proof to nail them then even after searching their luggage.
Lina was quoted saying, “Their arrest today was confirmed that they have been sending drugs from here for sometime now.”
Both men were also said to be flying to Indonesia but are now in police custody.
We tried searching for other credible sources to confirm this explosive piece of news, especially considering how the netizens reacted to it, but couldn’t find any. You can Google keywords like “Trillanes,” “employees,” and “drugs,” but only those blog sites that copied the same exact article from philstart.i-telecast.com would come up.
It doesn’t help either that philstar.i-telecast.com is a proven fake news site. We have debunked their fake stories, such as De Lima’s sister being nabbed in China for drug trafficking, new Thai king calling Duterte “my father,” World Bank approving P500-bill with Duterte’s face, Bill Gates investing $20 billion in the Philippines, and Marcos being elected as the new UN Secretary-General over De Lima, among others.
This only proved just how unreliable philstar.i-telecast.com is, which is why we can’t take their claim about Trillanes’ employees being arrested for drug trafficking as the truth. It is likely another lie, just how fake news sites lied about De Lima’s sister and son being caught with drugs too.
Be Informed. Beat the Trolls, Share the Truth!
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