New York-based Filipino journalist harassed for reporting about fraud

Description

Dave Llavanes Jr., a journalist based in New York, expressed apprehension when a prominent Filipino American doctor, who is facing multiple charges of alleged healthcare fraud started harassing him online by posting pictures of Llavanes’ family members.

“I didn’t know that writing a story based on the FBI national press release would result in this harassment. He sent me messages a week ago threatening me and my family,” Llavanes said.

Llavanes wrote a story for GMA7 about Dr. Alexander Baldonado, a Filipino-American doctor, who is facing multiple charges of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and soliciting healthcare kickbacks totaling over 20.7M USD or more than P360M.

“I don’t know this person, but what alarmed us when he started posting pictures of my family online,” Llavanes said.

Baldonado, who is out on bail, also posted a comment on the journalist's post “Why your father (is) hiding under your faces, libel cybercrime.”

Information
Number of attacked persons or entities related to media
1
Do they work as freelance or media?
No
Position in media
Status of journalists
Gender
Male
Country
NCR – National Capital Region
Full name or name of group
Identified
The name of perpetrator (individual/group)
Dr. Alexander Baldonado
Gender
Attack mention about gender background/sexual wording?
No
Date of incident
Type of incident
Doxxing of journalist