Chinese crypto scam targeting Filipinos to work for them: official

MANILA, Philippines – Chinese criminals running cryptocurrency scams in Southeast Asia are targeting Filipinos to work for them because of their English language and computer skills, a Philippine foreign ministry official said Monday.

Filipinos were “prized” targets for fraud networks operating in Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia, said Eduardo de Vega, acting undersecretary for migrant worker affairs at the State Department.

De Vega said efforts to repatriate Filipinos who were sucked into the scam were ongoing, with more than 100 brought home since last year.

The last group arrived in Manila on Monday. Four men, all in their 30s, had been trafficked into Myanmar for “less than two months”, where they were held in facilities, De Vega told AFP.

The men were in Dubai when they were recruited online to work as “customer support representatives” in Thailand, the ministry said.

When they arrived in Bangkok, they were taken to the western Thai city of Mae Sot and ferried across the border into Myanmar’s “rebel territory,” De Vega said.

There, they were “forced to trick individuals into investing in cryptocurrency,” the State Department said in a statement.

Myanmar’s rugged borderland is home to a patchwork of ethnic rebel groups and military-aligned militias that have fought each other for decades over territory, lucrative timber and jade resources and drug trafficking.

Typically, Filipino recruits will pretend to be women and develop online relationships with their targets, usually Westerners, De Vega said.

They get paid and get a share of the profits, but face physical punishment if they don’t defraud enough people, he said.

Four Filipino women in their 20s, who were detained in Myanmar for illegal entry from Thailand a few weeks ago, also returned to Manila on Monday.

They had claimed to be tourists, De Vega said.

It is believed that around 50 to 70 Filipinos are still working for Chinese fraudsters operating in Myanmar, he added.

There were another 50 Filipinos working for cryptocurrency scams in Cambodia and 50 in Laos, De Vega estimated.

He said “at least 119” Filipinos had been brought home since last year.

“We are slowly repatriating them, but some do not ask to be repatriated,” De Vega said.

– But if a relative contacts us with an SOS, we do it.

“Limited work opportunities”

The International Organization for Migration said most people trafficked to these illegal online operations came from across Asia – including from Vietnam, India and Bangladesh – but some were from as far away as Brazil and Kenya.

Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar have emerged as “destination countries” for victims, who tended to be “middle-class candidates who have limited employment opportunities” at home, said Itayi Viriri, IOM’s regional spokesman for Asia Pacific.

The scam centers were involved in online gambling, cryptocurrency, online money lending and romance applications, Viriri said.

De Vega said the Philippine government had repeatedly warned Filipinos against bypassing official employment channels when seeking work abroad.

“It’s not true that you can come as a tourist and then get a job,” De Vega said.

“If they ask for computer experts or customer service, you’re likely to be asked to be a scammer.”