MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Immigration rounded up 80 Chinese and Taiwanese “fugitives,” most of them wanted for cyber fraud in China, whose embassy sought help for their arrest and deportation.
Agents from the BI and the Philippine National Polie’s Counter-Intellligene Task Force arrested the foreigners at a building in Makati City around 10 p.m. Tuesday, November 8.
BI Fugitive Search Unit chief Bobby Raquepo said while “the warrant and the official communication (from the Chinese embassy) states that it’s cyber fraud, we are still in the stage of securing additional information as to what actual offenses … were committed in their country of origin.”
Aside from this, he said, some of the foreigners could be in the country illegally.
“When we required them to present their documents, they failed to do so,” and “when we asked their names they refused to divulge their true identities,” Raquepo said, adding none of the names they gave matched the BI’s records.
Among the arrested foreigners were four BI “targets,” whose identities the agency declined, however, to divulge.
BI spokesman Grifton Medina said the arrested foreigners would be subjected to further investigation for possible involvement in other offenses.
