Lapid’s wife back in PH after US probation for cash smuggling—immigration exec
By Tetch Torres-Tupas
The wife of Senator Lito Lapid is back in the country, the Bureau of Immigration said Friday.
The wife of Senator Lito Lapid is back in the country, the Bureau of Immigration said Friday.
The wife of Sen. Lito Lapid has managed to come home for the holidays here,
her first visit since she was arrested by the United States Department of Homeland Security in Las Vegas, Nevada, for not declaring $40,000 in cash she was carrying when she entered the US in November 2011.
The preliminary hearing on the cash smuggling case against Marissa Lapid, which was scheduled for February 7, has been postponed, according to Lapid’s lawyer, Elliot Krieger.
The filing of a federal criminal case against Marissa Lapid, the wife of Sen. Lito Lapid, is not an isolated case. There are quite a few Filipino travelers leaving or entering the United States who found themselves subjected to penalties of forfeiture for failure to report the money or currency in their bags. Not all were criminally prosecuted. Most of them were able to get their money returned after paying minimal penalties.
The wife of Senator Lito Lapid will not be required by the United States Attorney’s Office in Nevada to explain the source of her wealth when the hearing on her case for dollar smuggling starts on February 7, according to her American lawyer.
The wife of Senator Manuel “Lito” Lapid returned to Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 15 at the invitation of the Department of Homeland Security in connection with her bringing $50,000 into the United States last November, her American lawyer said Saturday.
The $50,000 that Senator Lito Lapid’s wife supposedly tried to smuggle into the United States last year was meant for medical treatment to cure her bone ailment, according to the senator.
