162 foreigners rescued from POGO hub in Cebu

MANILA, Philippines — At least 162 foreigners were rescued from an alleged illegal Philippine offshore gaming operator (POGO) hub at a resort hotel in Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu during a raid by authorities last Saturday.

The foreigners – 83 Chinese, 70 Indonesians, six Myanmar nationals, a Malaysian and two Taiwanese – who reportedly engaged in scamming activities, as well as five Filipino administrators or managers, were found at the POGO inside the Tourist Garden Hotel located in the city’s Barangay Agus.

The raid was conducted by personnel of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) and National Bureau of Investigation-Region 7 (NBI-7), together with the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking-Region 7 (IACAT-7), Bureau of Immigration (BI), Armed Forces of the Philippines, Department of Social Welfare and Development and Lapu-Lapu City Police Office.

At a press conference, PAOCC spokesperson Winston Romeo Casio confirmed that the raided facility was operating as a POGO hub.

“This is a 100-percent illegal POGO,” Casio said.

?He disclosed that most of the foreign nationals, along with the five managers, had previously fled from Pampanga after their hub there was raided.

He noted that the raid in Lapu-Lapu was initiated following a request from the Indonesian embassy, after three Indonesian nationals, who had stayed in the resort, managed to escape, after which the three sought assistance from the embassy, which then informed the Department of Justice - Region 7, IACAT-7, NBI-7 and the DOJ in Manila.

Casio revealed that they initially intended to conduct a rescue operation, but upon arriving at the resort, the foreign nationals were “caught in the act.”

“We were just to rescue the Indonesian nationals so when we arrived here, in flagrante delicto we saw that there were scam farms run by Chinese, Indonesians, and from Myanmar,” he said.

During the raid, authorities discovered the foreign nationals involved in illegal online gaming operations in makeshift workstations inside the resort.

?As they further explored the premises, they also found a restaurant, grocery store, an in-house dormitory, and even a health facility designed to keep the workers from