Bureau of Immigration (BI) officers have intercepted 13 Filipino passengers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) bound for Hongkong with fake boarding passes and tickets acquired from a scammer.
BI port operations chief Grifton Medina said the passengers, seven men and six women, were caught at the airline counter of Cathay Pacific at the NAIA 3 terminal.
They were turned over to the BI after Cathay Pacific personnel found that the self-printed boarding passes they presented were not in the manifest and were not issued tickets.
“It seems they were victims of scammers selling fake tickets at cheap prices,” Medina said.
He said it was only at the airport that the passengers reportedly knew they were deceived
When interviewed by members of the BI’s travel control and enforcement unit (TCEU), the passengers pointed to one of their female companions as the one who enticed them to buy the plane tickets.
However, the woman said she did not know that the boarding passes were bogus as these were only given to her by a certain “Jennifer”.
She alleged that she met Jennifer thrice and she was only instructed to distribute the tickets to her companions.
According to TCEU chief Timotea Barizo, they found out during investigation that their hotel bookings were cancelled.
Barizo said the victims may have been promised jobs abroad, hence the fake tickets and the misrepresentation.
“There were too many inconsistencies in their statements. We suspect they may have been victimized by illegal recruiters,” she added.
The passengers were turned over to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) for assistance and further investigation. (Jun Ramirez)
