The Department of Justice (DOJ) has directed the Bureau of Immigration (BI) to file appropriate cases against the judges who ordered the release of Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO) workers who were arrested in Las Pinas City in June for alleged involvement in human trafficking operations.
Meanwhile, the DOJ was also eyeing the filing of criminal charges arising from some 28,000 registered SIM cards seized during a raid on a POGO facility in Pasay City suspected of complicity in online scams.
Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla lamented that four of the courts in Las Pinas City have granted the petitions for habeas corpus by the arrested POGO employees without any condition.
“Four of the courts in Las Piñas have actively granted habeas corpus petitions,” Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla said in a media briefing.
“I want to tell you that I have instructed the Bureau of Immigration to file the necessary cases against the judges who willingly granted this habeas corpus petitions without any colatilla,” he added.
According to Remulla, there should have been a colatilla or conditions on the release order saying they can be freed unless detained for other causes.
“That way, they are ignoring the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Immigration, of the Department of Justice, with regard to illegal acts of aliens in the country. So we are filing cases against the judges,” he vowed.
He said the courts might have granted the petitions of 600 foreigners.
On June 27, authorities implemented a search warrant following alleged human trafficking activities in the compound of Xinchuang. Police reported that 1,534 Filipinos and 1,190 foreigners were rescued in the raid.
A lawyer of Xinchuang camp has denied allegations of human trafficking or illegal activities taking place at the compound, adding that the business of the company was legitimate.
“The SIM Card Registration Act is supposed to ensure that all the owners are verifiable and that SIM cards are not used for unlawful purposes. But the presence of 28,000 SIM cards is, in itself, questionable already,” Remulla told reporters.
Remulla said authorities will go after whoever was the registered owner of the SIM cards in what could “possibly” be a test case under the SIM Registration Act.
He said investigators are looking at how Republic Act 11934 or the SIM Registration Act will apply to this case.
Remulla said he will ask the help of the telecommunication companies to “sort out the mess of this magnitude.”
“The are many questions that are raised by these SIM cards because many of them are below the surface or are not at the surface itself. Because when you think of the SIM Card Registration Act, you’re talking about a telephone number being used as a text, call and text instrument within the telco system,” he explained.
“But one of the things that we realized at this point is that many of these numbers are also being used in the apps that are there. And many of these numbers, even if not registered with the telcos or not being
used by the telcos are being used through the app-based use of telephony,” he pointed out.
The DOJ will look at whether the case was already covered by the law, or if there were changes to the law that needed to be implemented.
Among the possible violations of the law that the department will look into were spoofing of a registered SIM and misrepresentation.
Spoofing carries a penalty of six years in jail and/or P200,000 fine while providing false or fictitious information or using fictitious identities or fraudulent identification documents to register a SIM comes with imprisonment ranging from six months to two years and/or a fine from P100,00 to P300,000.
Other acts punishable under the law include failure or refusal to register a SIM, breach of confidentiality whether intentionally or due to negligence, selling a stolen SIM and selling or transferring a SIM without complying with the required registration.
The extended period for SIM card registration ended late last month.
The law was the first legislation President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. signed in October last year.
This was not the first time, however, that SIM cards were recovered from a POGO hub alleged to be involved in fraudulent activities.
In June, agents seized more than 80,000 SIM cards in a POGO hub in Las Piñas but Remulla said they did not pursue then the violation of the SIM Registration Act.
“But this time, it’s one of the angles being pursued because when we were looking at the actionable intelligence, this was already considered as one of those that could possibly be violated especially with the advent of the SIM Card Registration Law’s effectivity throughout this country,” Remulla explained.
More than 650 POGO employees were apprehended in the Pasay raid, but only more than a hundred were subjected to inquest proceedings for supposedly engaging in love and cryptocurrency scams.
Of the more than a hundred, Remulla said 20 were foreigners while the rest were Filipinos.
“We have already made sure that in these scam activities, it’s not anymore just the foreigners that are being charged but also the Filipinos who participate in this scamming,” he said.
DOJ prosecutors are now preparing the inquest resolution, which could include charges for violations of the cybercrime law and the Revised Securities Regulation Code.
“Basically we’re looking at the scamming aspect of it. The scams that are being perpetrated using these very sophisticated operations of this magnitude. We’re talking about hundreds of people being used in an operation of this nature,” he said.
Prior to the Pasay raid, authorities also raided POGO hubs in Las Piñas and Pampanga.