THE Philippine National Police (PNP) announced last week that it had busted a large-scale crypto scam operation based in the Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga. About a thousand people of various nationalities who were forced to work as cyber scammers were rescued.
The discovery of the crypto scam center brings to light two things: a Chinese criminal syndicate could be running a regionwide cyber scam network, and the syndicate has been conspiring with airport and immigration officials to smuggle in aliens for its operations here.
Similar crypto scam ventures have been found in Myanmar and Cambodia, and the modus operandi is the same. Recruits are lured with offers of high-paying jobs, only to find out that they are virtual prisoners coerced to work as cybercriminals.
The popularity of crypto as an investment and payment method has grown tremendously in the past years. In the US alone, about 59 million people use it. Asia, however, leads the world in embracing crypto assets. Vietnam, India and Thailand are the region’s top crypto hubs. The Philippines is in 15th place, but it is showing signs of catching up.
Crypto’s popularity, however, has opened a big window of opportunity for fraud.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that from 2021 through the first quarter of 2022, more than 46,000 people have reported losing over $1 billion in crypto scams.
Globally, crypto scammers raked in a record $14 billion in 2021, according to one report.
A Chinese-led mafia is said to dominate the Asian crypto scam scene ever since China banned cryptocurrency in 2021.
The group has established a firm foothold in the Philippines. The crypto scam center in Clark had a multinational workforce made up of Filipinos, Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Malaysians, Thais, Taiwanese, Myanmarese, Nepalese and Hong Kong residents.
They work for 18 hours, luring online users into buying cryptocurrency or depositing money into false bank accounts after establishing fake romantic relationships. After gaining a user’s trust, the scammer casually offers investment tips to get their scheme rolling. The victim is asked for and may send crypto to the scammer.
There are other schemes as well, such as fake crypto exchanges and crypto wallets, where users are talked into investing in a new high-value crypto exchange opportunity.
One of the intriguing questions was how such a large workforce from several countries was assembled without authorities knowing it.
Sen. Ana Theresia “Risa” Hontiveros is convinced that a human trafficking syndicate picked the Philippines as an ideal location to operate because it could easily persuade airport and immigration officials to share in the booty. The senator points to the “pastillas scheme” in 2021 as evidence of that unholy alliance.
It was also Hontiveros who said that crypto scammers were using TikTok to recruit Filipinos. The syndicates prefer Filipinos because of their proficiency in English.
Eight Filipino jobseekers fell for this scheme, and ended up in a crypto scamming center in Cambodia. Some of them said their departure from Clark International Airport was facilitated by an immigration officer.
The police deserves to be commended for shutting down the crypto scamming center in Clark. But it would not have been there in the first place if the foreigners who were hired by syndicates had been denied entry into the country.
The Senate blue ribbon committee recently established the direct complicity of corrupt Bureau of Immigration officers in human trafficking cases, particularly at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
The committee chairman, Sen. Francis Tolentino, noted the “current flaws” that beset the bureau, and enjoined it “to be steadfast and be consistent enforcing immigration policies even in the general aviation area.”
Tolentino also said the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) and the PNP Aviation Security Group should clear the confusion over who is in charge of issuing exit passes and clearances, to end the practice of escorting passengers through customs and immigration for a fee.
The committee’s findings are notable. But a top-to-bottom reorganization, however, is a more efficient way of weeding out corruption at the Bureau of Immigration and MIAA.
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