Beleaguered businessman Celso de los Angeles and the alleged victims of his Legacy company’s double-your-money schemes face off today at the resumption of Senate hearings on the state of the preneed industry.

Sen. Mar Roxas, chairman of the Committee on Trade and Commerce, invited Legacy’s plan holders to attend and narrate how de los Angeles and his managers “sweet-talked” them into investing their hard-earned funds on Legacy Consolidated Inc. and its affiliate businesses, all of which have filed for dissolution.

 “We will find out how de los Angeles and his officers were able to convince parents and retired workers to invest their monies to Legacy. What sweet words did they use that resulted in the bitter plight of these plan holders?” said Roxas over the weekend.

He met earlier with some 200 Legacy victims in Davao City and heard their complaints about “how de los Angeles and his managers tricked them into investing their savings and retirement pensions in Legacy.”

Roxas recalled that one had agreed to testify at tomorrow’s hearing. He hinted the witness was a former ranking officer of Legacy, who will recount in detail how de los Angeles and his cohorts “planned scheming offers to generate money for the company, with the clear intent of misleading their investors and getting their hard-earned savings.”

“The education of our children is important and we must make sure that the savings of parents to send their children to school can still be recovered,” he said after noting that Legacy sold more than 50,000 educational plans worth P1.4 billion but the trust fund held by trustee banks only has P350,000, according to De los Angeles himself.

Aside from de los Angeles and Legacy preneed victims, other witnesses and resource persons invited to testify are ranking officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the Philippine Deposit Insurance Inc, players in the preneed industry, as well as plan holders victimized by other preneed firms.