The Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center (CICC) welcomed the conviction of 17 Chinese nationals who were arrested in a suspected cyberscam den in Iloilo City in November last year.
Iloilo City Regional Trial Court Judge Victorino Maniba ruled that the Chinese nationals violated the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, the Revised Penal Code and the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, when they forced workers to engage in a lustful conversations over the phone and do lascivious exhibition of body parts.
The convicts were sentenced four to eight months in prison and ordered to pay P75,000 each. In July, the convicts have applied for a plea bargain.
CICC Executive Director Alexander K. Ramos said that the conviction of the 17 Chinese nationals will send a strong signal to cyberscam operators that their days are numbered.
“This will show that we are determined to go after and punish cyberscammers,” he said. “We shall continue to go after these cyberscammers and we will find them because we have the capability.”
Ramos also thanked all the government agencies involved in the successful prosecution of the 17 Chinese nationals.
“The success of this operation in Iloilo City is proof that the whole-of-government approach will yield to successful result in ending cybercrime,” he emphasized..
The raid on the cyberscam den located in Barangay Lawa-an in Jaro District on Nov. 4, 2023 was made on the strength of a search warrant issued by Iloilo City Regional Trial Court Branch 39 after more than a month of surveillance.
Seized were 24 computers, 49 cellular phones, two switch hubs TP-link with 24 ports, two routers, one projector, one monitor, one modem, and one bundle and four boxes of subscriber identity module (SIM) cards.
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