The permanent ban on Philippine POGO has been in place for over a year, but the cross-border scam gangs that once depended on the gambling parks have not completely withdrawn. They have switched to a more covert method—dismantling large teams, abandoning large parks, and hiding in civilian residences, high-end hotels, and seaside resorts, engaging in "wild-style" guerrilla scams. The Philippine National Police has officially listed these dispersed gangs as key targets for inspection, joining forces with the Immigration Bureau, cultural tourism control, and community law enforcement to conduct comprehensive checks. Police Director Jose Merenciano Natares revealed that the police have received a massive amount of civilian tips, and underground scam operations are still surging in many places. It's one thing to shut down parks, but it's another to root out guerrilla teams infiltrated into the city's capillaries.
The permanent ban only covers the surface, with over 100 mutated gangs moving underground
Tracing back to the policy's origin, in November 2024, Little Marcos signed Executive Order No. 74 officially announcing the permanent closure of all Philippine POGO offshore gambling operations. This April, multiple departments jointly implemented the detailed rules, mandatorily requiring all gambling-related scam operations to completely cease by December 31, 2024. The timeline seems straightforward, but subsequent data tracking raises alarms—the government estimates that there are still at least over 100 underground mutated POGO gangs remaining, almost all centered around Chinese workers.
Former Congressman and former coordinator of the House Special Committee Robert Ace Barbers had already sounded the alarm earlier. His exact words were: The POGO ban can only shut down the visible parks, but it can't eradicate the criminal gangs. Many Chinese scam teams had already restructured into low-profile small crime networks before the ban took effect, specifically avoiding special inspections. He accurately identified a batch of high-risk areas—Chinese-concentrated areas in Metro Manila like Baclaran, Minlunlun, Paranaque, and popular tourist destinations like Palawan and Cebu, where underground gangs might routinely take orders in secret. These gangs prefer private, loosely regulated commercial and residential apartments, standalone houses, and seaside resorts, operating in a closed loop, specifically targeting regulatory blind spots.
The difficulty of inspections has doubled: the enemy used to be in the parks, now they are next door
The difficulty of enforcement before the ban is not on the same level as now. Previously, it was an open game—you knew where the parks were, surround, inspect, arrest, procedural operations. Now, it's a hidden game, guerrilla teams scattered into every corner of the city, civilian residences, long-term hotel rooms, and resort suites could all be crime scenes. The scale of personnel has decreased, mobility has increased, and concealment has deepened, making inspections almost exponentially more difficult.
Natares stated that the police are revisiting past experiences of busting dens while verifying new civilian tips, leaving no stone unturned in inspecting scattered crime spots. Currently, inter-departmental intelligence channels have been opened, with the Immigration Bureau, cultural tourism control, and community law enforcement teams sharing clues about people's movements, targeting inspections of buildings, long-term hotel rooms, and resort suites where expatriate Chinese congregate. In his words, continuous high-pressure law enforcement is necessary to maintain local public order. PASA's official website continues to follow the developments of the Philippine POGO ban—from the era of large-scale parks' "position warfare" to today's "wild-style" guerrilla warfare, the form of the battlefield has changed, but the essence of the criminal chain remains the same. Whether the net can be truly closed depends on whether cross-departmental intelligence can stay ahead of the dispersed teams.
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This article is from "PASA-Global iGaming Leader," a gambling industry news channel: https://t.me/pasa_news
Original in-depth gambling channel: https://t.me/gamblingdeep
Free data reports: @pasa_research
PASA Matrix: @pasa002_bot
PASA official website: https://www.pasa.news
