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MANILA, Philippines – A total of 279 Taiwanese cyber fraud suspects arrested last month were deported on Wednesday, September 19 to face criminal charges in their home country, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) said.
Guarded by an airport security detail, the deportees were handed over by the BI to officials from Taiwan before boarding two charter flight to the capital, Taipei.
All of illegal migrants are accused of running a multi-million dollar online and phone scam targeting elderly victims in China and Taiwan.
Members of the criminal gang — which also includes 86 Chinese and one New Zealand national — allegedly made calls or sent emails posing as police officers or state prosecutors to dupe victims back home into believing their bank accounts were being used by terrorists.
The scam targeted elderly citizens and involved persuading victims to transfer their savings into another bank account controlled by the gang.
Investigators were tipped off about the scam by Taiwanese and Chinese authorities in July, and a month later twenty homes across Manila were raided by police to arrest those involved.
The Chinese and the New Zealander will be deported at a later date, while two of the Taiwanese have remained in detention for separate charges of assault.
All will be blacklisted from entering the Philippines in the future.
The Taiwanese Embassy in Manila on Monday asked the Philippines to send home its citizens due to the poor detention conditions.
At least one detainee died and dozens fell ill due to poor conditions at the gymnasium in Camp Vicente Lim, Laguna, where they had been held since their arrest. – Rappler.com, with reports from Agence France-Presse
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