15 ‘call center’ workers held in NBI raids vs child porn

A newspaper ad led them to a “job” that caters to a global market.

Fifteen people were arrested late Tuesday in raids by the National Bureau of Investigation on two fake call centers in Manila and Quezon City that sold child pornography online to clients mostly in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

Ronald Aguto, head agent of the NBI Computer Crimes Division, said one of the businesses—listed as Werrcomm Solutions Inc. on Valenzuela Street, Old Sta. Mesa, Manila—uploaded videos and photos of nude girls aged 12 to 16.

Special investigator Jay Salanguste said the employees “do not engage in sexual acts but their job was to upload prerecorded sex videos and engage customers abroad in sex conversations.”

“They also chat with their clients by pretending to be a child or a young teenager,” Salanguste said. They got paid up to P30,000 a week and were instructed to use foreign sounding names in their chats, he added.

Werrcomm advertises itself as a legitimate call center company and its owners were former employees of American Chat Link, “a notorious pornography site in the 1990s,” Salanguste said.

“We just responded to a newspaper ad about a job,” said one of the 15 arrested Werrcomm employees when questioned. Aged 20 to 25, they face charges for violating the antichild pornography law.

Aguto said the NBI also raided another cybersex call center office in Quezon City but there were no staff members around when the agents arrived. Computers were seized from both shops.

The raids came after the police earlier said the country had become a major source of pornographic content in the fast-growing child cybersex industry, and vowed to crack down on those involved.

“They were caught in flagrante (in the act of wrongdoing),” Aguto told Agence France Presse. “Some of the computers contained child pornography as well as adult pornography.” With a report from AFP