Busted: Dionisia Pacquiao sells expensive jewelry and bag collection to help Marawi victims? It’s fake news!

It has been two weeks since the story broke about how Mommy Dionisia Pacquiao, the mother of Senator Manny Pacquiao, sold expensive jewelry and collection of bags to help Marawi victims. Since then, the story has been shared almost 50,000 times, based on the figures of the Facebook search that we pulled up.
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Her alleged charitable act garnered the attention and praise of the netizens.

It turned out that the story was originally published by thephpride.blogspot.com (Pinoy Pride) on June 16.

The website has published several fake articles before. The story was shared even further after it was published by ourdailyrevelationsph.com, which previously copied a satirical article, without a proper disclaimer, from The Adobo Chronicles about Senator Antonio Trillanes IV planning to sue BBC after his controversial interview with Stephen Sackur.

According to Pinoy Pride, one of Mommy Dionisia’s relatives told them on June 16 that she has sold over a dozen pieces of jewelry and signature bags to help raise funds for the victims of the Marawi conflict. The said relative added that the proceeds from the sale of her expensive bags even reached at least P1.3 million after selling the items to the rich women in Sarangani. The article even specified the pieces sold, which include three necklaces, five watches, three bracelets, and several earrings and rings worth over P3 million pesos.
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The Pinoy Pride article also noted that the bags sold were Sen. Manny Pacquiao’s gifts, or pasalubong, for her after going abroad. And Mommy Dionisia’s alleged reason for selling her things? She reportedly said that she is old and no longer have time to use the signature bags and pieces of jewelry, which made her think that it would be better to sell them and use the funds to help others. She added that no one would inherit her collection anyway because her daughter, Isidra, is not interested in her collection.

At the end of the article, it noted how her senator-boxer son would donate his earnings from his match with the Australian boxer, Jeff Horn, to whom he lost. However, Meme Buster has already busted this claim, also from Pinoy Pride, as fake. The boxing champ-turned-legislator did not make that promise of donating 100% of his earnings from the Horn fight to the Marawi victims.

Just like the story about her son donating all of his earnings from the Horn fight to the Marawi victims, this story about Mommy Dionisia selling her expensive bags and jewelry to help the victims is not true!

While searching for the Pinoy Pride author cited in the website, a certain Levi Tanpinco, we found this June 20 Bombo Radyo article reporting that Mommy Dionisia denied selling her bags and jewelry, which were given to her by her son and his wife, Jinkee. According to the report, Mommy Dionisia said that her name was merely used in the fake article to sell the things that she was alleged to have been selling.

But the story, despite how fake it is and how suspicious the source of the article is, it circulated further when talent manager and entertainment news writer Lolit Solis posted about it on her Instagram on June 24.

Kahit ano pang sabihin mo, bongga si Mommy Dionisia Pacquiao ha. Nagbenta siya ng mga branded bag at mga alahas na umabot sa almost P 3M para ibigay sa mga sundalo natin sa Marawi. Ang ganda ng dahilan niya, matanda na siya at iyong mga babae niyang anak hindi mahilig sa alahas at branded bag. Naisip niya ito at walang panghihinayang na ginawa. May pinagmanahan nga si Papa Manny na napakabilis din tumulong sa may kailangan. Sa mga ganitong panahon dapat talaga natin suportahan mga sundalo nating lumalaban at nasasaktan, iba namamatay sa paglaban para tayo ay maging safe para hindi maranasan ng pamilya natin ang hirap. Nandun sila lumalaban, namamatay para sa atin para malaya at safe ang atin bayan. Ipinadama ni Mama Dionisia ang pagmamahal ng isang ina. Sana marami pa ang tumulong magdasal para sa matatapang natin sundalo, magpakita ng pagmamahal sa pamilya nila na nawalan ng tatay o nanay dahil sa Marawi. Thank You Mama Dionisia kaya pala ina ka ng Champion dahil isa kang mabuting ina. We love you at para sa ating matatapang na mga sundalo, we Salute you stay safe our heroes. salamat salamat. #lolitkulit #70naako #instatalk

A post shared by LolitSolisOfficial (@akosilolitsolis) on Jun 23, 2017 at 10:06pm PDT

Her IG post was then picked up by Politiko Mindanao in their article, “Bongga! You’ll admire Mommy Dionisia for selling P3M worth of branded bags, jewelry from Pacquiao. Here’s why.”

On top of this, we found out that the Philippine Star’s Pang-Masa website published the story on June 23, under the column of Ed de Leon in this article, “Walang binatbat ang mga artista’t pulitiko na nagyayabang sa social media Mommy D nagbenta ng branded bags, alahas para sa mga taga-Marawi.”

The source of this fake story, thephpride.blogspot.com, is the same blogspot that posted fake stories, such as Senator Antonio Trillanes being abandoned by the Zambales crowd, US and 17 other countries banning the ‘Marcos Martial Law: Never Again’ book,  and Senator Manny Pacquiao vowing to donate 100% of his earnings from his Horn match to the Marawi victims.

Its About page has this some sort of disclaimer about how the website is meant only for intelligent readers, but “not for gullible people.”

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