POGOs: The problem that won’t go away
But vestiges of the outlaw industry remain. Some POGOs (Philippine offshore gaming operators) have reportedly burrowed underground, where they continue to operate. And many foreign POGO workers have lingered beyond the 31 December deadline to leave the country.
Now the Philippines Bureau of Immigration (BI) is forcibly deporting them. Resolution No 2025-002, signed 21 March, requires ex-workers to travel by direct flight only whenever possible, to prevent them from slipping the net en route to their home countries.
“This is unchartered territory since we started mass deportations and arrests,” said BI Commissioner Joel Anthony Viado. “Removing direct flights for POGO-related foreign nationals would lower opportunities for them to expand their operations in other [Asian] countries.”
Industry ban was just the start
Last July, in a fiery State of the Nation address, Marcos banned POGOs following allegations of money laundering, prostitution, human trafficking and torture.
Some POGOs, while purportedly offering online gambling services to offshore players, actually were fronts for online romance and crypto scams. In many cases, they relied on forced labour. Workers freed in high-profile raids reported being beaten if they tried to leave or failed to meet financial quotas.
Despite the ban and deportation efforts, the industry is evidently alive and well across Southeast Asia. And Filipino workers are still at risk. Philippines officials say unwitting job-seekers are now being lured to “POGO-like” operations overseas.
In a case reported on 18 March by the Daily Tribune, victims were recruited via Facebook for customer service jobs in Cambodia paying $1,000 a month.
It was a classic bait-and-switch. The workers travelled to Phnom Penh by an illicit “back-door” route, aboard a small boat, carrying bogus passports. On arrival, they were compelled to work as online romance scammers, for just $300 a month.
When they protested, they suffered abuse at the hands of their employers. Finally, dumped in a remote area by their captors, they made their way to the Philippine embassy and returned home.
“Traffickers are exploiting illegal routes to avoid detection by immigration,” said Viado in a news release. He called on local government units and authorities “to increase monitoring and enforcement in vulnerable areas”.
Criminals also use the “back door”
Criminals associated with POGOs are using the same modes of escape, reports the Philippine Inquirer.
Disgraced mayor Alice Guo, implicated in the operation of an illegal POGO in Bamban, Tarlac, fled the country by boat. Harry Roque, attorney and onetime mouthpiece for former president Rodrigo Duterte, did likewise. Guo was later arrested in Jakarta, Indonesia and returned to the Philippines to face charges of money laundering and human trafficking. Roque, still out of reach of law enforcement, is currently seeking asylum in the Netherlands.
Earlier this month, five blacklisted POGO workers, including two fugitives wanted in China, were apprehended trying to escape the Philippines in the same manner.
Stricter border controls and deportation processes are “just the beginning”, Viado said. “We will continue [working] to prevent criminals from finding ways back into the country or evading justice.”
Follow the money
A December report in the Asia Sentinel warned that POGOs wouldn’t go quietly. It called illegal gaming operations “an epidemic” that has spread throughout Southeast Asia.
“The problem is… a river of money going into the hands of organised crime” – an estimated $100 billion (£77.24 billion/€92.5 billion) a year, the report continued. The allure of billions in black market profits “isn’t going to stop”.
In January, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) convened in Malaysia to address the problem of illegal igaming, which exploded during Covid-19 shutdowns. In a statement, ASEAN “reaffirmed our collective resolve to combat transnational crime, including people smuggling, trafficking in persons, drug trafficking, cybercrime, money laundering and the growing threat of online scams”.
Philippines is an ASEAN member, along with Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
The Washington, DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies blames “the transnational nature of online gambling, lax governance at the national level, and ASEAN’s fractured regulatory environment.”