By AARON RECUENCO
Police raided an international trading company based in Pampanga Wednesday and arrested eight Israeli nationals and 474 Filipino employees for allegedly duping victims of hundred million dollars.
Armed with a search warrant issued by a Makati court, the Philippine National Police Anti-CyberCrime Group (PNP-ACG) operatives swooped down on three buildings where the International Brandings Development Marketing, Inc. (IBD) holds offices at the Clark Freeport Zone in Angeles City, arrested the suspects and seized evidence.
Yesterday, PNP chief Director General Oscar Albayalde presented the eight suspects, four of whom he identified as Gal Manobla, Natali Grin, Ishay Shaulov and Noa Hofman.
“This is an international group engaged in fraudulent foreign financial transactions involving millions of dollars.
Their victims include people from Europe, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Russia,” said Albayalde.
Albayalde said the operation stemmed from reports and complaints from several foreign nationals from Australia and South Africa regarding an alleged online trading scam that victimized them.
He said the suspects have allegedly taken hundred millions of dollars through online trading.
Australian Jan Theresa Beddgood, one of the complainants, attended the press conference to share her experience.
“I was convinced by clicking on an icon that said bitcoin, bitcoin opened and I quickly closed it. But next minute, I got a call encouraging me to invest. They said they will cost you 250 dollars, I did so,” narrated Beddgood who claimed to have lost more than 100,000 Australian dollars.
Beddgood said the next day, she was again asked to invest using her money until everything was taken from her in just a span of three weeks in January.
The other complainants were two Australians and a South African.
During the raid, police were able to extract several digital evidence from all the computers of IBD from the three buildings, according to Albayalde.
“Which proves that it is engaged in a fraudulent online trading activity that involves millions of US dollars victimizing other foreign nationals all over the world,” he added.
Charges in connection with the violation of Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 in relation to Article 315 (Syndicated Estafa) of the Revised Penal Code is being readied against the arrested persons.
Chief Supt. Marni Marcos, ACG director, said the modus operandi of the group is to lure victims, mostly foreigners, to invest on stocks online.
Once you are convinced using 250 dollars as a start-up, the suspects would convince you to give details of the bank accounts that include credit cards of their victims. Once the suspects assessed that the victim has plenty of money in the bank, the operation is taken to the next level.
“They will then ask you to download teamviewer (application) wherein once it is uploaded, the victims cannot control anymore their computers. So transfer of money will be done through online. They will be the ones controlling the transfer of money,” said Marcos.
One of the victims was duped of up to $2 million, according to Marcos.
Marcos said the company has been operating in the country for more than two years and has about 1,000 employees.
The employees served as call center agents encouraging victims to invest using the training program designed by the company.
“At the start they have a training until such time you go to the third room where they would be coached on how to get the money of the victims online. Some of them know that it is illegal,” said Marcos.
The official said that all the 474 Filipinos arrested will be treated as suspects. Follow-up operations will be conducted to the rest of the suspects who were not present during the raids.
Marcos said that some of the defectors from the company played a role in identifying the location of the company that led to the raid.
“They (victims) were able to talk to some group of defectors in the company. Maybe their (defectors) conscience was bothered so they tried to connect with these people and they came here,” said Marcos.