About 400 foreign nationals were arrested on Wednesday in a “large-scale” raid on an alleged online fraud farm in Manila, the national immigration agency said.
Authorities raided a building and found workers allegedly involved in online fraud operations targeting victims overseas.
In recent years, the international community has become concerned about similar fraudulent operations in Asia, which often involve trafficked victims who are tricked or coerced into promoting bogus cryptocurrency investments and other fraudulent schemes.
“Their operations were found to be in violation of immigration laws and posed significant risks to the public,” Mr. Fortunato Manahan, the Bureau of Immigration intelligence division chief, said in a statement describing the latest raid.
In July, President Ferdinand Marcos announced a ban on Philippine online gambling operators (Pogo) by the end of 2024 , which Manila believes has been used by organised crime groups for human trafficking, money laundering, online fraud, kidnapping and even murder.
The Bureau of Immigration had been monitoring ‘Pogo-like activities’ conducted by the raided company “for some time,” the statement said.
The foreign nationals, many of them Chinese, were undergoing registration procedures, immigration bureau spokeswoman Dana Sandoval told AFP. They will be temporarily detained pending deportation, the bureau said.
Washington-based think tank the United States Institute of Peace in its May 2024 report says online scammers exploit millions of victims worldwide and generate annual revenues of $64 billion (S$87.65 billion).
It estimates that the industry employs half a million workers, including 15,000 in the Philippines, who are recruited mainly through social media and then coerced into committing fraud by threats of torture if quotas are not met.
