Hundreds rescued from love scam centre in the Philippines

Hundreds of people have been rescued from a scam centre in the Philippines that made them pose as lovers online.

Police said they raided the centre on Thursday and rescued 383 Filipinos, 202 Chinese and 73 other foreign nationals.

The centre, which is about 100km north of Manila, was masquerading as an online gambling firm, they said.

South East Asia has become a hub for scam centres where the scammers themselves are often entrapped and forced into criminal activity.

Young and tech-savvy victims are often lured into running these illegal operations, which ranges from money laundering and crypto fraud to so-called love scams. The latter are also known as «pig butchering» scams, named after the farming practice of fattening pigs before slaughtering them.

These typically start with the scammer adopting a fake identity to gain their victim's affection and trust — and then using the illusion of a romantic or intimate relationship to manipulate or steal from the victim. This often happens by persuading them to invest in fake schemes or businesses.

Thursday's raid near Manila was sparked by a tip-off from a Vietnamese man who managed to flee the scam centre last month, police said.

The man, who in his 30s, arrived in the Philippines in January this year, after being offered what he was told would be a chef's job, said Winston Casio, spokesman for the presidential commission against organised crime.

But the man soon realised that he, like hundreds of others, had fallen prey to human traffickers running love and cryptocurrency scams.

Those trapped in the Bamban centre were forced to send «sweet nothings» to their victims, many of whom were Chinese, Mr Casio said — they would check in on their recipients with questions about their day and if and what they had eaten for their last meal. They would also send photos of themselves to cultivate the relationship.

Mr Casio said those running the scam centres trapped «good looking men and women to lure [victims]».

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Pig butchering romance scam: Former boss reveals how it is done

On 28 February, the Vietnamese man escaped the facility by climbing up a wall, crossing a river, and seeking refuge at a farm. The