Philippine police rescued 1,090 victims of human trafficking and online scams in a raid in early May at a POGO hub in Clark Sun Valley, Pampanga, according to Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, who cited Philippine National Police reports1. The Manila Bulletin reported that the raid took place on May 4 and that those rescued were held inside the Colorful and Leap Group Company, which operated within the Clark Sun Valley hub2.
The victims, described as a mix of foreign and Filipino nationals, said they were forced to work on fraudulent "cyber-enabled" platforms such as cryptocurrency2. Senator Risa Hontiveros, who chaired a Senate committee inquiry into the case, said most of the survivors who shared their accounts described a scheme similar to the love scam operations the panel had earlier investigated in Myanmar and Cambodia, with victims typically recruited from the United States through dating apps including Tinder, Facebook Dating, Bumble and Hinge2.
Gatchalian said POGO-related crimes recorded by police ran to 4,355 victims between January 2017 and June 30 of this year, involving 903 perpetrators1. He said Chinese nationals accounted for 793 of the suspects1. The offenses listed include human trafficking, forcible abduction, homicide, illegal detention, kidnap-for-ransom, theft, robbery-extortion, serious physical injuries, swindling and grave coercion1.
At a May 30 Senate hearing, PAGCOR's assistant vice president for Offshore Gaming and Licensing, Jessa Mariz Fernandez, said the agency inspects the country's two accredited POGO hubs twice a week: the Sun Valley Hub Corp. in Mabalacat, Pampanga, and the First Orient International Ventures Corp. at Island Cove in Kawit, Cavite2. Gatchalian said the regulator had failed to detect the victims despite those inspections, and that the two hubs had not complied with rules requiring the presence of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, Bureau of Immigration, Department of Labor and Employment, and law enforcement agencies on site since they received provisional licenses in 20192.
"You inspect two times a week and there are only two POGO hubs in the whole Philippines. So how come your inspectors were not aware about these 1,100 plus human trafficking victims?"
Separately, Gatchalian said police recovered 28,000 registered SIM cards at a POGO facility in Pasay City allegedly involved in online scams, and that a June 26 raid on Xinchuang Network Technology, Inc. in Las Piñas City led to the rescue of 2,724 people1. A June 27 entrapment operation in Pasay City led to the arrest of three Chinese nationals for torture, kidnap-for-ransom and illegal possession of firearms1.
What it means for players
The raid and the Senate hearings concern the offshore gaming industry that regulators license in the Philippines, not domestic casino or online betting sites aimed at Filipino players. The victims were foreign and Filipino workers recruited into scam operations, not gamblers. The accounts describe fraudulent crypto and romance platforms run from inside a licensed hub, which is the same category of operation covered in our guide to gambling scams and safety in Asia. People who lose money to such platforms are sometimes approached afterward by fake lawyers or agencies promising to recover funds, a pattern covered in our page on fund recovery scams. The status of POGO licensing and operations in the country is set out in our guide to the Philippines' ban on offshore gaming, and general rules for betting there are in Can I gamble in the Philippines?.
What happens next
Both Hontiveros and Gatchalian called for the total closure of POGO operations in the Philippines2. Gatchalian said he had filed a resolution to investigate the growing involvement of POGOs and accredited service providers1. No further dates for the Senate inquiry or for any regulatory action have been reported.
