Philippine police backed by commandos on Tuesday staged a massive raid and said they rescued more than 2,700 workers from Taiwan and more than a dozen other countries who were allegedly swindled into working for fraudulent online gaming sites and other cybercrime groups.
The number of people rescued from seven buildings in Las Pinas city in metropolitan Manila and the scale of the nighttime police raid were the largest so far this year, indicating how the Philippines has become a key base of operations for cybercrime syndicates.
Cybercrime scams have become a major issue in Asia, with reports of people from the region and beyond being lured into taking jobs in countries such as Myanmar and Cambodia.
Photo: AP
However, many of these workers find themselves trapped in virtual slavery and forced to participate in scams targeting people over the Internet.
ASEAN leaders last month agreed in a summit in Indonesia to tighten border controls and law enforcement, and broaden public education to fight criminal syndicates that traffic workers to other nations, where they are made to participate in online fraud.
Brigadier General Sydney Hernia, who heads the national Philippine police’s anti-cybercrime unit, said that officers with warrants raided and searched the buildings at about midnight in Las Pinas and rescued 1,534 Filipinos and 1,190 people from at least 17 other countries, including Taiwan.
The biggest groups were Chinese workers, with 604 reported rescued, 183 Vietnamese, 137 Indonesians, 134 Malaysians and 81 Thais. There were also people from Myanmar, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria.
It was not immediately clear how many suspected leaders of the syndicate were arrested.
Some of the workers told investigators that when they tried to quit they were forced to pay a hefty amount for unclear reasons or they feared they would be sold to other syndicates, police said, adding that workers were also forced to pay fines for perceived infractions at work.
Workers were lured with high salary offers and ideal working conditions in Facebook advertisements, but later found out the promises were a ruse, officials said.
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