PAOCC’s next target: Find Pogo hub ‘graves’

PAOCC spokesperson Winston Casio —PNA photo

MANILA, Philippines — The Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) is seeking the court’s permission to excavate locations within the compounds of two raided Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) in Tarlac and Pampanga amid suspicion that they bore remains of many torture victims, its spokesperson said on Wednesday.

In a television interview, Winston Casio said their operatives have expressed a strong belief that graves at a Pogo hub in Porac town in Pampanga would provide additional evidence to bolster the criminal charges of qualified trafficking lodged against 54 personalities.

READ: Pogo leisure hub in Porac has firing range, tunnel

“We have witnesses who have volunteered information that there were several victims who were foreign nationals whose bodies were buried in Porac, at the Lucky South 99 compound,” he said over the government program “Bagong Pilipinas Ngayon.”

“We have applied for a search warrant so that we can legally inspect and excavate the locations which, according to the witnesses, became burial grounds for these foreign nationals,” Casio noted.

He said the witnesses have already pinpointed the locations of the burial grounds of the foreign nationals and “hopefully, within the week, we will be able to get warrants for it.”

Casio made the disclosure a day after the PAOCC and the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group of the Philippine National Police filed at the Department of Justice qualified human trafficking charges against Cassandra Li Ong and 53 others for their alleged role in the operations of the Lucky South 99 scam farm in Porac town in Pampanga.

Prosecutor Richard Fadullon said on Wednesday that the resolution of the qualified human trafficking case is expected to be finalized within the week.

‘Firsthand knowledge’

Citing testimonies from the victims, Casio said Lucky South 99 has developed a reputation in the Pogo industry as a “torture area.”

“You see, the Chinese have this habit of gambling excessively up to the point that they could no longer pay for their losses, and they eventually get sold to these Pogo hubs,” he noted.

He said the charges were filed based on the sworn statements of 10 Chinese witnesses who supposedly had “direct, firsthand knowledge” of the cases of torture, kidnapping, and abduction committed at the Pogo hub.

“These witnesses have given testimonies as to their experiences of the kidnapping and were brought to the Lucky South 99 inside the Whirlwind Corp. compound to work for scamming activities,” he said.

Four Filipino witnesses also gave accounts of “torture, kidnapping and forceful abduction” at the Lucky South 99, and have all pointed to Ong as the person responsible, the PAOCC official said.

“Let’s not forget that [Ong] was only 24 years old and yet, she was able to set up these businesses. She has direct knowledge of everything that transpired (inside Lucky South 99) so we have implicated her as one of the principals,” he said.

Lucky South 99 has become a hub for love scams, cryptocurrency, and other crimes linked to Pogos, including kidnapping, murder, torture, sex and labor trafficking, and money laundering, Casio said.

More cases readied

Casio said the qualified trafficking cases comprise just the first batch of multiple charges that would be filed against the individuals behind the Pogo hubs in Porac and Bamban town in Tarlac.

Documents seized from the Pogo raids have yielded additional evidence which tends to show the “profit sharing” concept existing between Lucky South 99 and Whirlwind Corp., he said.

“The first to be set up was Lucky South 99, which eventually had several branches, such as those located along the Friendship Highway in Angeles City, Porac, in Vigan City [in Ilocos Sur], and also Laoag City [in Ilocos Norte] back in the day,” he said.

The profits derived from the operations of Lucky South 99 became the seed money to establish and jump-start operations of the Pogo hub in Bamban, Casio said.

“This explains why when (dismissed Bamban mayor) Alice Leal Guo, alias Guo Hua Ping, it was Zhang Jie, a former president of Lucky South 99, who helped her while she was in Batac (Ilocos Norte),” he said.

Fake passports probe

When Guo was arrested at the airport in Jakarta, Indonesia, she was seen through closed-circuit television footage with Duanren Wu, the financier of Lucky South 99, Casio said.

Guo has refused to disclose details of her escape from the Philippines, but Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla on Wednesday expressed doubts about her claims that she had used a yacht.

Remulla insisted on his theory that Guo, her “sister” Shiela, brother Wesley, and Lucky South 99 representative Ong left the country by plane.

“That’s the only plausible conclusion based on the facts. It just seems they are protecting someone from the immigration (bureau) who facilitated their exit by plane,” he said in a press briefing that tackled the case of Guo.

Remulla also raised the need for a full-blown investigation into the acquisition of fake passports and how foreign nationals obtain Filipino identity documents, citing potential threats to national security.

He also said Guo, who is currently under the custody of the PNP, should be detained by the Bureau of Immigration (BI) due to her pending cases for using a fake passport and posing as a Filipino despite being an alien.

“If there’s anyone who should detain Alice Guo, it should be the [BI] because an immigration case takes precedence over everything, as far as we’re concerned,” he added.

Ong seeks court’s help

At the Supreme Court, Ong’s legal counsel on Wednesday sought intervention from the justices, asking them to stop Congress from violating her constitutional right against self-incrimination during its inquiry into Pogos.

In the petition, Ong’s legal counsel, led by Ferdinand Topacio, accused members of the House quad committee of “pressuring” their client into providing information by “terrorizing her with pictures of alleged torture victims and telling her that she will be charged with the nonbailable offense of human trafficking.”

The counsel further alleged that the committee made “vulgar and improper insinuations” to pressure Ong into giving up her right to remain silent.