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MANILA: Philippine police on Friday launched a crackdown against an online syndicate offering fake entry permits to the country for foreigners and phoney coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination cards.
The move came after the Filipino Bureau of Immigration said on Thursday it had received complaints about fraudsters pretending to be immigration officers and offering paid assistance in arranging access into the country.
Currently, only Filipinos, foreign spouses, parents and children of Filipinos, and several categories of foreigners exempt from restrictions, are allowed to enter the Philippines. Tourists remain subject to a COVID-19 travel ban.
Philippine National Police chief, Gen. Guillermo Eleazar, said: “I have instructed the anti-cybercrime group to intensify their monitoring of illegal activities related to COVID-19 such as selling of fake entry permits, RT-PCR results, and vaccination cards. We will make sure that those behind this scheme will be made accountable.”
Bureau of Immigration spokesperson Dana Sandoval told Arab News on Friday that people targeted by the fraudsters were being duped into thinking they were interacting with real immigration officers.
“The syndicate mostly preys on foreign nationals that are not allowed to enter the country due to ongoing travel restrictions. In these cases, the scammers require payments but disappear as soon as they receive the money,” she said.
Sandoval noted that a popular method of entrapment was a love scam targeting Filipinos who were tricked into believing they were in a relationship with a certain foreign national.
“The alien then pretends to enter the Philippines but is allegedly held at the airport by immigration officers. The victim is then made to talk to the fake officers and is tricked into paying for his release, only to find out that no such alien has arrived, and they have been talking to a fake immigration officer,” she added.
Numerous reports of the sale of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards and test results recently prompted the government to issue a warning that anyone caught with such documentation would face imprisonment.
Presidential spokesman, Harry Roque, said: “That is a public document. If you use a fake vaccination card, that’s falsification of a public document. You will be jailed.”