A naive Dominican hopes that at least by telling her story publicly, she may avoid that others become unknowing victims like herself. Miguelina Gómez is suffering the consequences of having signed as guarantor for a Tunisian-French woman, Carmeline Laure Calo de Nettune, who she had befriended at the Casa de Francia, the former cultural center of the French Embassy in the DR. Calo, an accountant at the Casa de Francia, had asked Gómez to serve as guarantor for a loan of RD$70,000. When the bank called to confirm that she was the guarantor, she learned the loan was for RD$300,000 not for RD$70,000. But Calo talked her into it, and Gómez trusted her 57-year old friend blindly. Calo left the country, and Gómez now has to pay the loan and the accrued interest. Calo is no longer employed by the French government, and the Embassy, while sympathetic to Gómez’s predicament, says it was a personal matter, in which they have no responsibility.
