On Friday, authorities in the Philippines announced the arrest of a Chinese national that they suspect is the ringleader of a network of illegal Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs) involved in human trafficking, online scams, and other crimes.
The suspect, who has been identified as Lin Xunhan, 33, was caught in a Thursday evening raid in Biñan, a town in Laguna province on the island of Luzon, according to the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC).
The raid was part of a broad government crackdown against illegal Philippine offshore gaming operations (POGOs), which have been connected to a range of criminal activities, including human trafficking, scam operations, and prostitution.
Speaking to reporters on Friday, Undersecretary Gilbert Cruz, the commission’s executive director, described Lin as “the kingpin of the POGOs in our country,” claiming that he had been connected to alleged scamming operations in Ilocos Region, Central Luzon, Calabarzon, Cebu, and Metro Manila. In a report submitted to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Friday, PAOCC described Lin as “a figure of significant concern within the landscape of organized crime in the Philippines.”
“Since 2016, Dong has systematically built a network of scam farms, often employing legal businesses as fronts to obscure his illicit activities,” the PAOCC report stated, as per a Rappler report. “While some of these operations have been raided and shut down, many continue to thrive, complicating law enforcement efforts to dismantle his extensive criminal enterprise.”
According to Cruz, Lin’s name was wanted in connection with Lucky South 99, a POGO hub in Porac, Pampanga province, that was raided and shut down by the authorities in early June, on suspicion that it was involved in torture, human trafficking, and illegal scamming activities. Lin, who investigators also described as Lyu Dong or Boss Boga, was arrested along with 12 Chinese nationals and nine Filipino bodyguards.
The PAOCC believes that Lin is also connected to scamming operations in the town of Bamban, in Tarlac province, which have been linked to Alice Guo, the town’s former mayor.
Guo is the subject of an ongoing Senate investigation into her alleged involvement in money laundering and Chinese-run online scam operations in Bamban. The investigation began in May, following raids on illegal Chinese-run POGOs that were operating from properties in Bamban allegedly owned by a company belonging to Guo. One raid in March rescued 371 Filipinos and 497 foreigners who police believe were trafficked into scam operations.
The investigation into Guo, who is now detained in Pasig City after her arrest in Indonesia in early September, has been marked by a range of dramatic revelations. The largest of these is the likelihood that she is actually a Chinese national named Guo Huaping, who was born in China’s Fujian province and arrived in the Philippines only as a teenager. The PAOCC this weekend announced that it has found a witness who can verify a connection between Lin and Guo, claiming that they were both involved in the sale of pornographic videos at the Porac POGO hub.
The Guo case has resulted in increased scrutiny of POGOs, which are legal offshore gaming services that offer online games to non-Philippine citizens based outside the Philippines. (In practice, most are from mainland China.) POGOs have existed in the Philippines for two decades, but grew considerably after former President Rodrigo Duterte’s election in 2016 – the same year that PAOCC claims Lin Xunhan arrived in the country.
Like online gaming operators in other parts of Southeast Asia – particularly in Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar – POGOs, both legal and illegal, have since branched out into scamming operations, which are usually carried out by a trafficked and coerced workforce. In his annual State of the Nation speech in July, Marcos announced a ban on POGOs, claiming that they had “ventured into illicit areas furthest from gaming such as financial scamming, money laundering, prostitution, human trafficking, kidnapping, brutal torture, even murder.”
As the crackdown proceeds, the Philippine authorities are slowly unpicking strands that point to the existence of a wide and intricate network of criminality, which extends across the region and may also have nodes of contact with the Chinese security state. Philippine investigators suspect that Alice Guo may also have worked as a Chinese spy, a claim that was echoed by the Chinese businessman She Zhijiang in a recent interview with Al Jazeera.
She, who is currently detained in Bangkok after his arrest in mid-2022, was quoted as saying Alice Guo once worked for China’s Ministry of State Security, the main agency that oversees foreign intelligence. She Zhijiang headed the development of New Yatai City, an online gambling and cyber-fraud hub in Myanmar’s Karen State, close to the border with Thailand.
As long as the Philippine investigations continue, we can expect many more such revelations – though whether they ever fully unravel these criminal networks remains very much in question.