Pilferage of Electricity

Hi atty! good day! again i am faced with a legal dilemma
and i hope you can shed some light on this for me. thank you in
advance for any advice. I live in a family compund where
there are 4 families. we have the main house with 3 bungalows
and the external house with no access to the main house.
our relatives recently transferred to the external house
and she applied for electricity with the local electric company.
She was given a yellow card and was told to do some
modifications with the wiring first. while waiting for the
electricity to be connected, without our knowledge, she
tapped directly to the electric post to get power. There are
also some construction work at the front of her house wherein
she had to provide an extension cord for the workers there.
the electric company did a chack and found out she was pilferaging
electricty and they took the extension cord and the connection to the electric post.
also they checked the appliances at my aunts house to calculate for the penalty. they
tried to get our meter as well but my dad told them we shouldnt be
dragged into their problem coz on our end, we never had any violation.

recently, we found out that our meter and account for the
main house was being penalized for what had happened. they
are claiming we violated the contract because of pilferage
and external connections. they are also saying that we used the
extension cord to connect our electricity to the house of
our aunt who was pilferaging, this is amidst the fact that there were nothing
connected to the extension cord. my aunt is also blaming us
for this even though she knows deep inside that it was her who stole
electricity and not us.

My questions are:

1. can we be held liable even if we had no knowledge and had no connection
with the pilferage? also, it happened to a different house beyond our premises?
2. can they use the extension cord as prima facie evidence against us?
3. they are forcing us to pay the penalty but we refuse coz
we were never at fault and the calculations they made was with
the appliances in our aunts house, is there anything we can do about this?

the funny thing is, my aunt who was at fault, has ben approved for the connection even
after what happened and we are now faced with losing our electric meter and service.

i am so stressed with this coz electricity is a necessity
and as a working man, it would be hard for me to go home without
the convenience of electricity. thanks again in advance.

1. it all depends on the evidence.

2. yes

3. file a letter with their customer service, then file a complaint at the Energy regulatory commission.

you can file a complaint against your aunt for whatever losses you incur, but always there has to be proof.

hi atty. thanks for your advice. recent update. we just found out that recently, the said aunt of mine has done it again. this time, she even had a contact with the electric company whom she paid for to pilferage electricity yet again. what can we do. i dont want to sever the family's relationship with each other, but is this gonna help us alleviate our problem coz now we will report them for the violation? hope you can help atty, what should we do? who do we need to approach and talk to? thanks in advance

so sorry atty for the misinformation, i was too excited to post. we are not sure yet if she paid the electric company employee to have an illegal connection, or whether she paid them to lift the hold on her pending electric service application. what if it was the latter? if we cant trust their employees, should we go to nbi or to erc perhaps? please help

document the illegal connection with pictures and report to the electricity company.