BSP warns public vs e-mail scam

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) warned on Friday the public against e-mail purportedly sent by BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. seeking personal financial information.

The BSP said that it has tapped the network of the Anti Money Laundering Council (AMLC) to track down, stop and possibly prosecute the perpetrators posing as Tetangco.

According to the BSP, the e-mail being circulated under the supposed address of Tetangco which claimed that the recipient was the beneficiary of a $10-million prize money from an unnamed benefactor.

Supposedly, the BSP was entrusted to hold the fund on behalf of this benefactor whose identity would be disclosed 18 months after the email recipient has received the funds.

The e-mail then asks the email recipient to disclose his full contact information supposedly for verification. After disclosing the information, the e-mail claimed that “diplomats” would arrange moving the funds from the BSP to the recipient’s account.

The recipient is asked to disclose his name, phone numbers, complete residential address, occupation, gender and age to another spurious e-mail address claiming to be Tetangco’s personal e-mail address.

“For the record, the BSP is not in the business of safekeeping money or gold or other valuables for private individuals,” the BSP said in its advisory released yesterday.

The BSP said it has begun tracking the original perpetrator of the e-mail scam through the AMLC and its network including the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

“Please be aware that this comes from a syndicate using the name of the BSP and the central bank governor to gain information that could be used possibly for fraudulent activities,” the BSP warned. “We request that you therefore disregard this spurious message and to warn your family and friends against this scam.”

Since the Philippines was removed from the blacklist of countries tagged as havens for money laundering, the AMLC has secured access to the Egmont Group, the network of financial intelligence units (FIUs) running after funds from illegal activities including terrorism.

AMLC’s acceptance into the Egmont Group followed the country’s removal from the list of non-cooperative countries and territories (NCCTs) of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF).

The Egmont Group is a loose organization of financial intelligence agencies around the world, including the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (Fincen) and the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Center (Austrac).

The Egmont network would help AMLC track various financial scams including internet scams although officials admitted that there was little they could do in the way of prosecuting the perpetrators because of questions of jurisdiction and even jurisprudence.