Immigration officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport intercepted 13 Filipino passengers bound for Hongkong with fake airline boarding passes they acquired from a scammer.
BI Port Operations Division Chief Grifton Medina said the passengers, seven men and six women, were intercepted at the airline counter of Cathay Pacific at the NAIA 3 terminal after airline personnel found that the self-printed boarding passes they presented were not in the manifest and were not issued tickets by the airline.
“It is seems that they are victims of a scammers who prey on the public by selling fake tickets at cheap prices to entice their victims,” Medina said.
He said it was only at the airport that the passengers knew they were scammed after the airline informed them that their boarding passes are not encoded in their system.
BI-Travel Control and Enforcement Unit chief Timotea Barizo said the passengers pointed to one of their female companions as the one who enticed them to buy the plane tickets, but the woman claimed she also 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.
It was also found out that some of their hotel bookings were canceled.
“They were also allegedly told to wear T-shirts bearing the name of a herbal product during their trip and were instructed to take off the shirts after they are cleared by Immigration. It was done to make it seem like they were on an official company trip abroad,” she said.
The victims may have been promised jobs abroad, hence the fake tickets and the misrepresentation.
“We suspect they may have been victimized by illegal recruiters,” she added.
All 13 passengers were eventually turned over to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking for assistance and further investigation.