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Immigration officials in the Philippines have arrested around 400 foreign nationals allegedly manning a foreign-facing online gambling (POGO) and cyber-scamming operation in Metro Manila.
The raid on the facility in the Tambo area of Parañaque City was executed on Wednesday (January 8) and is the first major raid on a POGO-like operation since a ban on the sector came into effect on January 1.
Fortunato Manahan Jr., chief of the intelligence division of the Bureau of Immigration, said the detainees are suspected of targeting overseas victims.
“Their operations were found to be in violation of immigration laws and posed significant risks to the public,” he said.
The suspects will be deported if found to be involved in POGO-like activity. It was not immediately clear what the nationalities of the detainees are, although previous mass raids have predominantly involved Chinese nationals.
The raid apparently confirms that large-scale POGO-like operations and/or cyber-scamming operations are continuing post-ban, despite reports from the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission and other sources that illegal operations have split into smaller groups and dispersed across the Philippines.
It also indicates that some illegal operators have resisted taking even the simplest measures to decrease their visibility.
The premises raided on Wednesday is only hundreds of metres from the Entertainment City precinct of integrated resorts, raising the possibility that police, immigration officials or other law enforcement bodies were aware of the operation prior to implementation of the POGO ban.
It was not immediately clear if the company that was raided was a former POGO licensee under gambling regulator PAGCOR, or if any of the hundreds of detainees had worked legally for a POGO licensee.
Immigration commissioner Joel Anthony Viado told reporters that the raid is part of a sweep of post-ban POGO-style operations and a clean-up of illegal foreign labour.
“We will not tolerate any activities that endanger the safety and welfare of the public,” he said.
Also on Wednesday, the immigration bureau called on the public to pass on information on any suspected “illegal aliens” who have refused to leave the Philippines post-ban, and warned it would prosecute individuals and entities that harbour or otherwise assist illegal labour.
The bureau last week said that more than 11,200 foreign nationals authorised to work for POGOs until the end of last month remain in the Philippines.
Meanwhile, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said on Wednesday that he is proceeding with a resolution that would trigger investigations into suspected money laundering by banks and other financial institutions that did business with POGOs and their service providers, but did not file suspicious transaction reports.
Gatchalian said billions of pesos linked to POGO operations have entered the economy without flagging by banks or by the Anti-Money Laundering Council.
The senator earlier backed his anti-gambling colleague Senator Risa Hontiveros when she called last week for passage of a “comprehensive law” to close all possible loopholes exploited by residual POGO elements.
It remains unclear if such a bill would include a prohibition on the so-called Special Class of Business Process Outsourcing licensees, more modest, non-gambling operations that a post-ban cross-agency taskforce and PAGCOR are allowing to work with overseas-based gambling companies.
