Six Filipinos who managed to flee their employers in Laos after being trafficked to engage in illegal work by syndicates arrived home on Good Friday.
This was learned from Bureau of Immigration (BI) Commissioner Norman Tansingco, who said that what happened is part of a string of human trafficking occurrences that were reported over the past months in Southeast Asian countries.
The repatriated Filipinos arrived via Philippine Airlines flight PR741 last April 6, 2023 at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 2.
Tansingco said the victims left the country on separate occasions supposedly to work as chat support agents in Thailand but were instead brought to Laos where theywere forced to work for syndicates, under a company where they served as love scammers targeting Asians.
The scheme, he said, was to look for possible clients who they can dupe into falling in love with them and then encouraging them to invest in their pseudo company.
They were then sold three times from one company to another before they managed to reach out to the Philippine Embassy through online communication.
Tansingco, in lamenting the current human trafficking issue in some Southeast Asian countries, said: “Imagine being sold like inanimate objects. These transnational crimes are becoming more and more alarming, and I call on everyone to remain vigilant.”
