FROZEN BY ASSOCIATION

I don’t know if you’ve been following the news, but another group was recently implicated in the flood control mess.

I won’t go into the specifics — but one detail jumped out at me:

353 bank accounts were frozen by the AMLC.

And some of them reportedly belonged to family, friends, and other individuals.

So the obvious question is:

How does the AMLC decide whose accounts to freeze?

We don’t know for sure. But a client once shared something interesting based on his own experience.

According to him, if the person being investigated deposited Php500K or more into someone else’s account, that recipient’s account also got frozen. (This is anecdotal based on a client’s experience.)

In their case, they received exactly Php500K, their account was frozen (just that account; not all), they had to hire a lawyer, file the proper case to unfreeze the account. It took around 4 months.

The scary part is how easily innocent people can get caught in the blast radius — and how expensive it is to prove you’re clean.

Because once your bank account is frozen, life doesn’t pause.

And the damage spreads outward to even more innocent people: landlords, contractors, employees, vendors, etc.

Now here’s where this gets uncomfortably relevant to real estate.

If the “Php500K threshold” theory is even remotely true, then imagine a seller later tagged for laundering.

That seller paid a broker a commission — say Php500K, which is not unusual.

How is it usually paid? A personal check deposited into the broker’s account.

Meaning: the broker’s account could be frozen too — not because the broker did anything wrong, but because money touched their account.

And the article mentioned something even more chilling:

Properties were also frozen.

As brokers, how are we supposed to know which properties are frozen?

Will the AMLC annotate the order on the title?

Because the first time we might find out a property is frozen is when we apply for the eCAR or attempt to transfer the title with the RD.

And by then, the buyer has already paid — and the money is long gone.

Lesson: In real estate, one “dirty” client can freeze everyone around them.