THREE victims of human traffickers, including a social media influencer, have been rescued and repatriated from Myanmar, Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco yesterday said.
Tansingco said the victims, who were recruited to work as call center agents and left the country for Singapore last April posing as tourists, arrived in Manila last June 15.
“They were recruited online to work as call center agents in Thailand only to find out that they were being transferred to Yangoon in Myanmar to work in a pseudo-call center involved in scamming,” the BI chief said.
Tansingco did not disclose the identities of the victims but said one of them was a social media influencer who has more than 10,000 subscribers.
Tansingco reiterated his warning to prospective overseas Filipino workers against leaving the country posing as tourists.
“If you wish to work abroad, do so legally through the Department of Migrant Workers,” he said.
Tansingco has earlier cautioned Filipinos that human traffickers and crypto currency scammers are now using social media accounts to contact and offer work with high salaries as call center agents abroad.
He added that most of the victims of the modus were young urban professionals in their 20s to early 30s.
Aside from misleading social media advertisements, Tansingco said human trafficking syndicates have started using the cover of religious travel or pilgrimage to bring their victims out of the country.
Some scammers, he added, provide their victims with fake government identification cards, leave forms and travel authority which are used to hoodwink immigration inspectors into allowing them to board their flights.
Since January this year, the Department of Foreign Affairs said it was able to rescue and repatriate 210 Filipino victims of traffickers who were made to work as cryptocurrency scammers in Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos.
Of the 210, authorities have rescued 90 in Myanmar, 52 in Cambodia and 68 in Laos.
Last year, the DFA said around 150 to 160 Filipinos were also rescued in the region.
