Hontiveros warns vs emerging guerrilla scam operations

MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Risa Hontiveros flagged on Wednesday the “alarming trend” of emerging guerrilla scam operations, allegedly taking over the presence of illegal Philippine offshore gaming operators (Pogos) in the country.

Hontiveros, during the Senate’s marathon plenary debates on the proposed 2025 funding of the Department of Information and Communications and Technology (DICT), brought up the matter.

In her interpellations, she particularly asked Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who was speaking on behalf of DICT as the agency’s budget sponsor, how they intend to address the supposed trend.

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“Following the welcome declaration of the President banning Pogos, our law enforcement officers have found an alarming trend that instead of using Pogos as regulatory cover, guerilla scam operators are now emerging, perhaps even harder to detect. Ano pong magagawa ng Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) para i-address ito?” asked Hontiveros.

For his part, Gatchalian reported that the CICC has managed to apprehend a total of 11 scam hubs, both legal and illegal, that are linked to these operations.

“And this is in cooperation with various law enforcement agencies such as Philippine National Police and National Bureau of Investigation and they have the technology to also detect scam hubs in the country and they also have a hotline that people can call this type of scamming operation,” said Gatchalian.

The DICT, however, opted not to disclose its methodology in order to detect such operations. Instead, they asked for an executive session to fully tackle the matter.

President Bongbong Marcos, during his third State of the Nation Address in July, ordered the ban of all Pogos in the Philippines. He then subsequently ordered Pagcor to wind down and seize the operations of these firms by the end of the year.