A SOUTH Korean wanted for telecom fraud by Seoul has been arrested by immigration agents in Pampanga.
Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco said Lee Seul Ki, 37, was arrested last July 11 in his condominium unit at the Clark Freeport Zone in Angeles City by operatives from the BI’s fugitive search unit.
Tansingco said Lee was arrested on the strength of a mission order that he issued at the request of the South Korean government, which sought the BI’s help in arresting the fugitive.
“We will send him back to Korea after our board of commissioners has issued the order for his summary deportation. We will then include him in our blacklist to prevent him from re-entering the Philippines,” Tansingco added.
BI records showed Lee last arrived in the country on May 26, 2016 and has not left since then.
Lee, according to Tansingco, is the subject of an arrest warrant issued by the central district prosecutor’s office in Seoul and Nambu district court in 2017.
He is charged for his alleged involvement in a voice phishing syndicate where he supposedly posed as a police officer or financial advisor in making calls to victims who were duped into revealing their personal bank data.
The scheme reportedly enabled him to transfer the victims’ money to his bank account.
Tansingco said that based on the information provided by South Korean authorities, it is estimated that Lee and his group earned more than 178 million won or nearly US$130,000 from the racket.
Immigration officers assigned at the Clark International Airport in Pampanga barred from entering the country a former US Air Force serviceman who is a convicted sex offender.
Tansingco identified the passenger as Rusty Conlan Thomas, 33, who was intercepted last July 8 when he arrived aboard an Eva Air flight from Taiwan.
Tansingco said Thomas was denied entry after the BI officer who processed his arrival saw that his name prompted a positive hit in the BI’s derogatory alert system.
“It was found that Thomas is a registered sex offender due to his record of conviction for a sex offense he committed while serving in the US Air Force,” Tansingco said, adding Thomas was tried by a military court martial in 2022 and convicted on two counts of possession of child pornography which resulted in his discharge from the service.
The Philippine Immigration Act deems as excludable aliens who have been convicted of crimes involving moral turpitude.
As a consequence of his exclusion, Thomas was placed on the immigration blacklist which perpetually bans him from entering the country for being an undesirable alien.
