The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) of the Philippines recently announced that during a raid in Mariveles town, Bataan province, two villas rented by Chinese nationals were targeted, resulting in the arrest of 10 suspects involved in "pig butchering" and cryptocurrency scams.
Investigations revealed that these individuals were originally members of an online fraud base in "Zone 3" of Porac, Pampanga. After the base was shut down last year, they did not return to China but instead moved to remote areas to reorganize and continue their fraudulent activities.
According to the NBI Criminal Intelligence Division, the operation was based on information provided by a Chinese informant. After a month of surveillance, the suspects' residence was pinpointed, and during the raid, numerous computers and mobile phones used for committing crimes were found, with mobile phone cameras covered, presumably used to impersonate others for scams. Some suspects even hid in closets in an attempt to evade arrest.
All 10 individuals involved in this case are Chinese citizens, some of whom were staying illegally under "tourist visas" without company registration or business permits. The scam involved a typical "romance + cryptocurrency" scheme: the suspects pretended to be wealthy and attractive to gain the victims' trust, leading them to invest in fake cryptocurrency platforms, and once money was extracted, they would cut off contact and flee.
The NBI stated that although the scam group did not have a clear leader, their roles were well-defined and their operations were highly covert, becoming a new variant of online fraud gangs following the decline of offshore gambling. The suspects will be prosecuted under the "2012 Cybercrime Prevention Act," the "Anti-Financial Account Fraud Law," and anti-money laundering laws, and will subsequently be handed over to the immigration bureau for deportation.
