FOUR foreign fugitives wanted by authorities for committing serious crimes in their homelands were nabbed by the Bureau of Immigration (BI).
BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco said that based on a report from the BI’s fugitive search unit (FSU) headed by Rendel Ryan Sy said that the four were arrested in Pampanga, Catanduanes and Metro Manila.
Those arrested included two Koreans, an American and a Dutch national, all of whom are presently detained at the bureau’s detention facility Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig City pending deportation proceedings.
Arrested last Oct. 10 in Clark, Pampanga was Korean national Kim Won, 34, who is subject of an arrest warrant from the Dongbu district court in Seoul for allegedly engaging in telecommunications fraud.
On Oct. 13, FSU agents arrested inside his condominium unit in Taguig City another Korean identified as Kim Girok, 29, who was issued an arrest warrant by the Daegu district court on charges of running a prostitution racket and human trafficking scheme via the Internet.
Dutch national Jan Cornelis Stuurman, a 71-year-old suspected pedophile, was arrested in Virac, Catanduanes on Oct. 14 for being an overstaying alien and for allegedly exploiting three Filipino minors.
The last fugitive arrested is American Steven Vernon Cross, 51, who is wanted to stand trial before the US District Court for Eastern Virginia where he is charged with committing wire fraud and laundering money instruments. Cross is also a convicted sex offender who was sentenced to one-year imprisonment by a court in Kent County, Michigan for sexually assaulting a child.
The four is just part of the 130 foreign fugitives that the BI’s FSU have arrested from January to October this year.
“They are undesirable aliens whose continued presence here poses a serious threat to public interested Hence, they were arrested and will be immediately deported as undesirable aliens,” Tansingco added.
The four aliens will be deported to their respective countries and placed in the bureau’s blacklist to prevent them from re-entering the Philippines.
