The Philippines is infested with criminals like the thousands apprehended Tuesday. The Philippines suffers pervasive child malnutrition; and the Philippines is infested with American war fighters and their weapons looking for a fight with China.
The Philippines is a key operations base for cybercrime syndicates and governments at all levels need to be more diligent, say Philippines business management association members.
Police swarm crime syndicate compound in Metro Manila on Tuesday. AFP Photo.
On Tuesday in Metro Manila, thousands of criminals claiming to be human slaves were caught conducting cybercrime. They were taken from seven buildings. Few people are ever formally identified as victims of human slavery while conducting criminal activities. AFP Photo.
Cybercriminals are people or teams of people using technology to commit malicious activities on digital systems against vulnerable families. They steal people’s money or are thieving sensitive information and personal data then generating profit from extortion, ransoms, or blackmail. Cybercriminals are known to access the cybercriminal underground markets found in the deep web to trade their stolen malicious goods and stolen data.
Photo credit: Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG)
Discovered within active cybercrime operations by the Philippines National Police were 1,534 Filipinos, 1,190 foreign nationals from over a dozen countries, including 604 Chinese, 183 Vietnamese, 137 Indonesians, 134 Malaysians and 81 people from Thailand according to Brigadier General Sydney Hernia of the Philippines national anti-cybercrime forces.
Police were unsuccessful in catching the ringleaders, only nabbing thousands of cybercrime workers who claim they were forced to commit crimes for many days, months and years, apparently.
Last month some 1,400 Filipino and foreign workers in the Clark freeport area of Mabalacat city in Pampanga province north of Manila, all who also claim they were forced to carry out cryptocurrency scams, police reported.
Since Ferdinand Marcos and Sara Duterte took over the Philippines following the end of Rodrigo Duterte’s term in office, enormous, organized crime syndicates locally and from Myanmar and elsewhere have attacked Filipinos with phishing scams, website spoofing, ransomware, gaming scams, crypto scams, malware and internet of things (IOT) hacking. These criminals have employed tens of thousands of people and harmed the lives of every Filipino say some police, and businessmen in general.
“Losses of money and the cost of cybersecurity must be absorbed by the supply chain, and the cost passed on to consumers who today are hard pressed,” notes Dale Carter, security director of The RINJ Foundation, commenting on the reactions to questions for this article.
“These crimes against some of the poorest people in the world, where their children suffer malnutrition and disease, are reprehensible crimes done by people without a conscience.
“Our organization has no sympathy for people who claim they were tricked into a life of crime and stayed in that crime syndicate for more than three days to a week. They should have gone to police. Their active peers must now go to police with their story and their evidence. They should protect victims by reporting the crimes, not continue to profit from crime. The stories they tell are rehearsed and fake,” argued Ms. Carter.
“Americans have been pressuring the Philippines to go easy on criminals who claim to be slaves. This claim is overworked. An annual human trafficking report by the U.S. urges governments to protect survivors of trafficking from ‘inappropriate punishment and further victimization.’ But we are talking months and years of profiting from crime with the full knowledge that their activities were indeed crimes and that they were stealing from people who were hungry, desperate and vulnerable. I am not heartless, I just want to see the end of this exploitation with impunity,” added MS. Carter.
“There is only one takeaway, there is no defence for attacking and destroying credulous families using money crimes. These are criminals using a lie to invoke impunity for disgusting criminality, exploiting the vulnerable,” Ms. Carter added in a harsh tone. “This crime syndication must be stopped. If you see a crime, report the crime,” Ms. Carter said.
“In the Philippines, banking institutions are beginning to talk more to the public but overall, institutions in the Philippines are vulnerable targets with little modern cyber security. Cyber security is very expensive. The Philippines overall is a hub of child sex slavery, internet child pornography, human trafficking, crypto scamming, and all manner of cybercrime. The country is a match for Myanmar as a phone center and hacker station for the worst of the world’s cyber-criminal organizations,” she continued.
The cost of crime to producers, distributors, critical venders, “like grocery stores and fresh water deliveries,” has been passed on to the public said a group of mall workers over a coffee.
“The spinout from massive, organized cybercrime conducted under the noses of government and police in the huge capital region of the Philippines is decimating the country, particularly the poor and thousands of workers who say they have been trapped in jobs where they are bilking their countryfolk and never seeing a peso of the money,” noted Ms. Carter.
Philippines Military Commandos and police raided over half a dozen buildings Tuesday in the Metro Manila region hoping to obtain evidence to make cases against large criminal syndicates that hire local people online and others from other countries to come to the Philippines and work for advertised attractive wages and a comfortable environment, cheating Filipinos out of their money in massive scams ranging from bank scams to crypto-currency scams.
Facebook is a key criminal conduit. Meta providing free internet service to Filipinos to get the messages across.
Campaigns luring people to spend their money on cybercrime scams and unemployed workers to unwittingly join cybercrime operations.
Criminals from America and around the world take over the Philippines Crime Syndicates and exploit hungry and poor Filippinos.
These exploitive crimes are happening at a time when UNICEF says that in the Philippines, “a third of children are stunted from malnutrition, the Philippines ranks fifth among countries in the East Asia and Pacific regions with the highest stunting. The Philippines government has been urged to set child malnutrition as a priority but there has been no reaction despite intense pressure from businesses and business management groups.
“The government’s declaration of malnutrition and child stunting as a priority agenda will ensure that concrete measures will be taken, sufficient funds will be earmarked, and actions will be cascaded from the national all the way to the community level,” the business management group of the Philippines said in a statement on 20 June 2023. Photo credit: UNICEF. Art/Cropping/Enhancement: Rosa Yamamoto / Feminine-Perspective-Magazine
One bank worker who does not wish to be identified because she is not authorized to speak for her bank, responded to an FPM.news journalist digging into an ATM bank scam story tried to explain that a debit card from the Royal Bank of Canada was being repeatedly cheated 10,000 Philippines Pesos because ther bank was maybe trying to avoid the transfer of funds from Canada and the United States for cybercrime. In this case the person was “Bruno” an 83-year-old retiree who has lived n the Philippines for 17 years. He said it was taking months to fight for and recover his money, approximately $300.00 Candian each occasion, he said.
The bank employee was asked if blocking foreign currency funds from coming into the country was good or bad for the country, she replied saying it was very bad. That seems to be true and most Filippinos who were asked the question replied in the same way.
These illegal businesses are filling mobile phone devices with attractive offers. “But click the link and people are on their way to losing all their savings,” explained a teller at BDO Bank in Baguio City, Philippines.
Warning issued by BDO Bank in the Philippines and emailed to thousands of BDO customers.
Typical Lure obtained under an investigative Ruse