EDITORIAL — Of scam hubs and victims

The National Bureau of Investigation raided separate scam hubs operating in the towns of Siay and Alicia in Zamboanga Sibugay last Wednesday.

The hubs had a total of more than 230 workers, an estimated 50 of whom might be trafficking victims, according to the bureau. Many of them were Chinese nationals.

Some Chinese nationals were also operating the scam hub, the bureau further said.

One of the workers said he had been recruited to victimize other Chinese nationals using whatever modus necessary, whether love scams, investment scams, or other kinds.

As per a GMA online news report, NBI Director Melvin Matibag said that the operations were as extensive as the offshore gaming operations allowed by suspected Chinese spy and former Bamban Mayor Alice Guo to operate in Tarlac.

We thought we had the problem of illegal scam hubs licked, but apparently this was not the case.

Is it really that easy for foreign operators to set up shop here and get the people they need to run it?

If there is nothing we can do to prevent the entry and establishment of scam hubs then perhaps the next best thing we can do is make sure they do not operate that long.

In a way this might even be more damaging to the scam hub operators; they will have wasted their invested money. But this would also mean that some people will have already been scammed, and some victims will have already been trafficked.

This brings up another issue. Again, we should be able to determine who are the victims and who are the perpetrators here. Some of the workers, including the Chinese ones, were likely duped with offers of better-paying jobs and were persuaded to enter the country on tourist visas.

Their situation is not really unlike that of Filipinos who are also duped with offers of better-paying jobs abroad, leaving as “tourists”, only to find themselves trapped in a scam hub operation somewhere in Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, or Thailand.