Prosecutors in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte have sounded the alarm over some of the supposed recipients of her office’s multimillion payments because of their odd-sounding names, but a graphic circulating online purportedly showing the names presented at the trial is fabricated. The list was traced to a Facebook group that shares satirical content and is an edited version of a news graphic published by the media organisation Philstar.com.
“This is how disrespectful the Office of the Vice President is. Disrespectful, dishonest service and refusing to uphold her mandate. This is why she shouldn’t be in any government position,” reads a Tagalog-language overlaid text on a Facebook video posted on August 4, 2026.
The attached graphic contains text that reads “the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte”, along with a list of strange-sounding names, some of which are similar to common Filipino snacks and sexual innuendos.
The graphic surfaced a day after prosecutors at the impeachment trial reviewed receipts that showed the supposed names of the people who received confidential funds from the vice president’s office ( archived link).
Confidential funds are lumpsum budget allocations that Philippine government agencies use for surveillance or intelligence-gathering activities ( archived link). These are often included in the budgets of civilian state agencies to support operations that are related to national security and peace and order.
Screenshot of the falsely shared post taken on August 7, 2026 with a red X added by AFP
Prosecutors presented the receipts as the trial shifted its focus on Duterte’s alleged fund misuse and unexplained wealth. Duterte also faces accusations of making threats against President Marcos, his wife and former House speaker Martin Romualdez ( archived link).
Among the acknowledgement receipts presented during the trial on August 3 was signed by a ” Mary Grace Piattos“, a name that first emerged in November 2024 and raised suspicion over the authenticity of the vice president’s documentation as it shared a name with a popular brunch spot and a potato chip brand ( archived link).
Civil registry officials who testified then in a House of Representatives inquiry in April said they could not find any census records for Mary Grace Piattos, raising suspicion that the liquidation documents may have been fabricated to conceal the misuse of confidential funds ( archived link).
Comments suggest that Facebook users believed the claim.
“They’re fooling the country. Even the fake names were turned into vulgar jokes. This is too much,” says one user.
Another wrote: “Imagine, they waste their time thinking about those names & submit them to (the Commission on Audit) as their report about Confidential Funds.”
The circulating graphic was shared in similar posts on Facebook, but they are in fact not the names presented during the actual hearing.
Not in receipts
A reverse image search found the earliest copy of the graphic was shared in a Facebook group whose name is a play on House of Representatives and “thieves” ( archived link). The group’s description reads: “We post satire here, we’re not fake news peddlers.”
Screenshot comparison between falsely shared post (L) and Philstar’s original graphic (R), with the red X added by AFP
The list does not contain any of the names that appear on receipts that the prosecutors reviewed during the actual hearing.
The style of the graphic also resembles an actual list containing 11 names published by Philstar, which said the list with the fabricated names “is an altered meme and was not created or published by Philstar.com” (archived here and here).
Other local news outlets also published the same list in their reports of the impeachment hearing (archived here and here).
AFP also reviewed the annexes found in the impeachment documents uploaded on the Senate’s official website, but did not find any of the names in the acknowledgement receipts labelled as evidence ( archived link).
AFP has previously debunked misinformation linked to Duterte’s impeachment.
