[UPDATED] Wisma Putra on alert after M’sian job scam victims rescued in Philippines

KUALA LUMPUR – The Foreign Ministry has been put on alert after Malaysians were found among more than 2,700 cybercrime syndicate victims who were rescued following a massive raid by police in the Philippines this week.

The ministry said the Malaysian embassy in Manila has begun identifying and validating the status of 134 victims who are believed to be Malaysian citizens out of a total of 2,714 victims of the criminal syndicate that was offering fraudulent job offers.

Those who were attracted by the syndicate’s offer were subsequently subjected to forced labour and wrongful imprisonment in the Philippines.

The embassy has confirmed that local Philippine authorities raided the company Xinchuan Network Technology Inc and managed to save the syndicate victims, consisting of citizens of various countries, including Malaysia, the ministry said in the statement today.

“Victims who are believed to be Malaysian citizens will undergo an investigation process, documentation and deportation to Malaysia in the near future,” it added.

It was earlier reported that Philippine police backed by commandos staged a massive raid on June 27 and rescued more than 2,700 workers from China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and more than a dozen other countries. The victims were allegedly duped into working for fraudulent online gaming sites and other cybercrime groups.

The human trafficking victims were rescued from seven buildings in Las Pinas city in metropolitan Manila. The night-time police raid was the largest so far this year, according to reports.

Earlier this year, dozens of Malaysians were rescued in Cambodia where they had been lured by a job scam syndicate. 

The victims claimed that they had been offered attractive jobs but, once in Cambodia, they were kept in prison-like conditions and forced to to make telephone calls to con people of their money, using techniques similar to those used in the Macau scam. 

Officials at the Malaysian embassy in Hanoi had met the victims, and provided counselling as well as assistance in obtaining detailed information regarding the actual incident, including getting information to trace the syndicate’s mastermind. They also processed relevant documents for the release and repatriation of all the Malaysian victims.

Some of the victims recounted that their salaries were withheld, and they were physically and mentally abused when they were held captive for months.

The victims were forced to sleep in squalid conditions, with 10 people crammed into a small room in the same building as their workplace, where more than 300 victims from other countries were also being held.

At a press conference with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in Hanoi in late March, Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had said that a total of 287 Malaysians who were victims of the syndicate had been brought back home by that time. – The Vibes, June 28, 2023