Frank Gaglione
Pearlasia Gamboa says she has paperwork to prove that her Philippine gold mines are legit.
Frank Gaglione
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Illustration by Sam Bosma
The woman who more often than not calls herself Pearlasia Gamboa withdraws three sets of government identification from her wallet — two California driver's licenses and a U.S. passport — and spreads them on the table. Each bears a different name next to her own photo. A handsome Filipina who looks younger than her 60 years, Gamboa has high cheekbones, dark eyes, and glossy black hair. "I have to show you all my IDs," she says with pride.
Pearlasia, aka Elvira Gamboa, aka Pearlasia Gamboa, has granted an audience with a reporter this May afternoon for the purpose of demonstrating that she is not a con artist. Showing off her panoply of assumed names might seem an odd way to start. Then again, there is little about Gamboa that conforms to expectations.
She calls attention to a fourth form of identification, a green-and-gold business card bearing the company name "Pearl Asian Mining, Inc." Alongside a headshot of a beaming Gamboa in a yellow headdress and red beads is the name Bae C. Catiguman. It means "Princess of Unity," she explains, a title she claims was given to her by warring indigenous tribes among whom she brokered peace in the mountains of the Philippines. "I am a princess," Gamboa/Catiguman says.
According to federal and state authorities, she is also a serial scammer. A resident of Redwood City, Gamboa has been investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for fraudulently soliciting investments in an allegedly phony Philippine gold-mining operation between 2004 and 2008.
She is also facing accusations that she stole more than $300,000 from a San Francisco real-estate investor with ties to the family of infamous "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss, and then threatened to dismember him this year when he tried to get his money back.
And that's before the story of Pearlasia Gamboa starts to get really strange.
Gamboa is the past president of the Dominion of Melchizedek, an enigmatic island nation in the South Pacific. Leaders associated with Melchizedek — named after a holy man who makes a brief appearance in the Book of Genesis — say it is an ecclesiastical state similar to the Vatican, with its own laws and religion. However, it has never received diplomatic recognition from most countries, which may be because the atoll claimed as its territorial capital lies underwater at high tide. And the prominence of convicted con artists in the upper echelons of Melchizedekian government raises questions about the country's legitimacy and true purpose.
David Korem, the Dominion's former vice president and Gamboa's husband, has been prosecuted several times by federal officials in connection with financial crimes. Gamboa acknowledges he was engaged in illegal activity, but denies allegations that she has committed fraud or theft. Instead, she insists, contrary to the assertions of federal and state authorities, that she is a spiritual leader and entrepreneur who has innocently run afoul of laws intended to protect consumers from investment fraud.
"I don't want you to distort everything," she tells SF Weekly. "I want the truth. I'm coming to you. I'm showing you everything."
Getting to the bottom of that truth requires delving into a story that might have resulted from an artistic collaboration between Ian Fleming and Salvador Dalí. Gamboa's tale involves secret ore deposits, hidden stocks of Soviet nuclear armaments, the Queen Mary ocean liner, portions of Antarctica, a new version of the Bible, allegations of fake deaths and miraculous resurrections, and a collection of some of the most colorful aliases ever to grace America's criminal and civil case dockets. (According to court documents, Korem also answers to the names Tzemach Ben David Netzer Korem and Branch Vinedresser.)
While it's impossible to deny the outré entertainment value of Gamboa's dealings, this is comedy with an edge. Her latest alleged victim, real-estate investor Eric Diesel, says he fears Gamboa might try to do him physical harm. The SEC alleges in court filings that Gamboa persuaded a New York financial firm — which is not identified, per standard agency practice — to sell $5.4 million of stock in her fake gold-mining concern.
Given the complexity and diffuse nature of some contemporary stock investments, it's not always easy to put names and faces to those Gamboa and Korem are said to have defrauded over the years. But authorities say real people lost substantial sums as a result of the pair's bizarre schemes.
"They're highly entertaining," says Steven Suchil, a private insurance lawyer in Sacramento who investigated Gamboa on behalf of the state of California in the 1990s. "Unless you're burned by them."
In 1995, Gamboa appeared at a small bank in Shasta County seeking a $20,000 car loan. Rather than apply for a personal loan, she sought this sum on behalf of a financial entity she called Bankasia AG. A clerk suspected something wasn't right and reported her to state officials, who told her that it was illegal to represent herself as a bank without proper licensing.
California financial regulators were not prepared for what came next. "Her response was to come back with all this information about the Dominion of Melchizedek and how it was a licensed bank," recalls Kenneth Sayre-Peterson, acting general counsel for the state banking department, which investigated Gamboa at the time. Looking into it, investigators realized that the car loan was just the tip of the iceberg. Gamboa and Korem, he says, "were soliciting deposits from people. There was fraud involved."
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