MANILA, Philippines – Land Transportation Office (LTO) chief Assistant Secretary Virginia Torres has exhorted owners of motor vehicles and motorcycles to avoid dealing with fixers and follow legal procedures in registering their units after police arrested over the weekend a suspected manufacturer of fake vehicle plates.

Torres made the statement after police caught Rodeldo Absin making fake license plates inside his house in 33 BMA Mabolo St., Tatalon, Quezon City at about 12:30 p.m. last Saturday.

While she lauded the police for “making LTO’s job of tracking down illegal manufacturers of faked plates and other LTO documents easier,” she also warned the public from dealing with suspicious individuals, telling them to deal only with legitimate LTO personnel.

"They (the public) have no reason to deal with fixers anymore because as everybody could see our services and transaction time on various services have improved considerably as compared during the previous years," Torres said.

Torres said Absin’s arrest by authorities is a welcome development in the LTO’s ongoing all-out campaign to crack down on syndicates sabotaging the credibility of the agency.

“Certainly, they (the police) are making our jobs easier by putting behind bars those behind the proliferation of fake plates and other documents which the suspects pass off as genuine to the unsuspecting victims. We welcome all the help that we can get especially from our law enforcers,” she said.

Aside from license plates, Torres said some unscrupulous groups and individuals also resort to faking other documents emanating from the LTO such as driver’s license, car registration and even the result of car emission tests which is a requirement before a vehicle could be registered with the agency.

She also said that they are now carefully studying how to come up with added security features for license plates, driver's licenses, vehicle registration papers and even smoke emission test results to discourage con artists from coming up with spurious documents that tarnish the image of the agency.

“I will see to it that we will stamp out all these illegal activities and we will certainly appreciate if the public and the other law enforcement agencies could help us with our campaign,” she added.