Short answer. It can be. Article 315 covers false pretences executed before or at the time of the fraud, including falsely pretending to possess power, influence, qualifications, property, credit, agency, business or imaginary transactions. A promise that merely failed afterwards is a different matter, and the timing is what separates them.
What the law says
By using fictitious name, or falsely pretending to possess power, influence, qualifications, property, credit, agency, business or imaginary transactions, or by means of other similar deceits.
Revised Penal Code, Article 315 — Swindling (Estafa). Read the full provision →
The list is wide, and deliberately so
Article 315 punishes fraud committed by using fictitious name, or falsely pretending to possess power, influence, qualifications, property, credit, agency, business or imaginary transactions, or by means of other similar deceits. Influence and connections are named outright, alongside pretended qualifications, pretended agency for somebody else, and transactions that never existed. The closing phrase, other similar deceits, keeps the list from being a closed one, so a fabrication that does not match any single word in it may still answer the description.
The pretence has to come first
The heading over this group of acts is the part people miss: the false pretence must be executed prior to or simultaneously with the commission of the fraud. That is what distinguishes estafa from a deal that went wrong. Somebody who took money on the strength of connections he never had was deceiving at the moment he was paid. Somebody who genuinely intended to deliver and then failed, however badly, was not — and the remedy there is a civil one. The question is not whether you lost money; it is what was represented to you before you parted with it.
The money must have been parted with because of the pretence
The article speaks of defrauding another by means of the false pretence, which ties the deceit to the loss. So the account that matters is why the payment was made: what was said, what documents or names were produced, what was promised in return. Where a person paid knowing perfectly well that the claim was hollow, the connection between the pretence and the loss is weaker. This is not a technicality — it is usually the part of the story a complainant needs to set out most carefully.
Assemble the representation, not just the receipt
Most complainants arrive with proof of payment and little proof of what was said, which is the wrong way round: the payment is rarely disputed and the representation always is. Save the messages, the voice notes, the names dropped, the photographs of supposed offices or documents, and the identity of anyone present when the claims were made. Note the dates against the payments. The penalty brackets in the article were revised by later legislation, so treat any figure from an older text as unreliable, and take what you have to a lawyer.