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| Southeast Asia |
| Secret hospitals in Philippines offer criminals surgical makeover to evade police: 'Entirely new person' |
| 2024-07-22 |
| [FoxNews] The centers allegedly serve as fronts for a larger transnational scam operation Authorities in the Philippines have uncovered secret hospitals that offer plastic surgery for fugitives and scammers seeking to evade arrest, according to reports. "You can create an entirely new person out of those," said Winston John Casio, a spokesman for the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission. Police raided one such hospital in the southern suburbs of Manila, leading to the discovery of a second hospital. Authorities will shut down both hospitals "in the coming weeks," the BBC reported. An anonymous tip told the authorities that an unlicensed hospital was operating in Pasay, located just five miles south of the capital Manila. An intelligence officer confirmed to the commission that the hospital existed, though it was initially framed as a "stand-alone" operation. Authorities arrested two Vietnamese doctors, one Chinese doctor, one Chinese pharmacist and a Vietnamese nurse, finding that none of them possessed a license to practice medicine in the country. The hospitals expand the country’s increasingly distressing "Philippines offshore gaming operator" (POGO), which officials have alleged has ties to China. POGO presents itself as an online casino, but has actually served as a front for a "scam center" with hundreds of workers, including Chinese nationals. The POGO centers have proven a high-profile concern for the Philippines, which worries worry about widespread criminal activity. The mayor of Bamban in May found herself in the middle of a scandal when the Bureau of Immigration opened an investigation into whether she had constructed her identity and personal history to run for office. Officials alleged that Mayor Alice Guo could in fact be a Chinese national who helped facilitate the establishment of the POGO scam center in Bamban, which facilitated "love scams" where scam workers adopted fake identities to establish romantic relationships online and extort money from a victim. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #2 "Make me look like Hillary Clinton." |
| Posted by: SteveS 2024-07-22 20:35 |
| #1 Enter a wanted man, leave as a dumpy middle age women. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2024-07-22 19:59 |