MANILA (UCAN): The Philippine Bureau of Immigration warned of a new human trafficking scam where victims are forced to pose as Christian pilgrims or missionaries.
Philippine and Thai police revealed the scam details following a probe and wiretaps, Fides, reported on April 9.
Joel Anthony Viado, a commissioner at the Philippine immigration bureau, spoke about some such trafficking cases in an April 7 statement.
On April 1, immigration officers at Ninoy Aquino International Airport [NAIA] stopped three women aged 23, 25, and 50 as they attempted to leave the country. They headed to Thailand via Singapore and claimed to be full-time Church volunteers going for missionary work in Thailand.
Discrepancies in their documents led to questioning. Two victims confessed they were not part of any missionary group, but teachers recruited for illegal employment at a school in Thailand.
They also admitted that the woman they were travelling with, who claimed to be their congregation’s founder and head preacher, had recruited them.
Viado said this echoed a trafficking method detected earlier, which came to be called the “bitbit” [carry] scheme, which means a frequent traveller transports unsuspecting women abroad and forces them into illicit work.
In the latest case, the victims were referred to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking [IACAT] for assistance, the bureau said.
According to immigration officials, the female trafficker had recently been to Thailand with another group of passengers, whom she claimed were her Church companions. The people who previously left with the trafficker have not returned to the Philippines, the officials said.
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The Philippine Interfaith Movement Against Human Trafficking praised the efforts of the police and government.
Father Bryand Restituto, an assistant to the secretary general of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, also expressed concerns about human trafficking. He condemned trafficking networks exploiting vulnerable people and misusing religion and its practices to commit criminal acts.
In a similar case in 2011, six Filipinos headed for Lebanon posed as nuns to avoid immigration scrutiny. They later admitted they were heading there to work illegally, CBCP News reported.
The immigration bureau reported 998 victims of human trafficking in 2024, Fides reported. It identified activities and schemes such as fake pilgrimages, arranged marriages, and surrogacy.
Most victims are lured through social media and forced into prostitution and in “scam cities” in Thailand, Cambodia, and Myanmar.
These scam centres are known for forcing English-speaking people from different countries to use computers or mobile phones to scam rich people in Western countries.
