EDITORIAL - Identity theft

How easy is it to steal personal identity in the Philippines? Relatively easy, if the details presented by senators about suspended Mayor Alice Guo of Bamban, Tarlac are accurate.

Guo, whose certificate of candidacy for mayor listed her birth on July 12, 1986 in Tarlac and her mother as Filipina Amelia Leal, is actually Guo Hua Ping, born to Chinese national Lin Wenyi on Aug. 31, 1990 in China’s southern province of Fujian.

This is according to Sen. Risa Hontiveros, who announced yesterday that examination conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation showed that Guo’s fingerprints in her NBI clearance matched those of Guo Hua Ping in the Chinese passport. “This means these are the fingerprints of one and the same person,” Hontiveros said.

There was no immediate reaction from Guo, who skipped the Senate hearing last Wednesday reportedly because she was “sick and stressed” by recent developments involving her identity and alleged links to illegal Philippine offshore gaming operator or POGO firms.

Apart from faking her own identity, Guo also declared fake incorporators of Hongsheng Gaming Technology – a POGO that Guo represented before she ran for mayor – by stealing the identities of vendors at the public market in Tarlac, Hontiveros said. The senator learned about the fake identities after a woman named as one of the incorporators surfaced and denied involvement in the POGO. The woman, a BPO worker, also said she recognized three other supposed Hongsheng incorporators as market vendors who sold vegetables, breakfast food and grilled meat.

Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, who has been pushing for a total ban on POGOs, said a Google street view check of the supposed incorporators’ addresses showed humble homes. Did the vendors authorize Guo to use their identities to set up an illegal POGO? Were their identities faked or stolen?

The mystery surrounding Alice Guo has raised concern not only about how POGOs are being used to engage in criminal activities, but also how easy it can be for foreign spies to enter and operate in the country. Reforms are urgently needed in several agencies to plug the loopholes that facilitate identity theft and faking of Philippine citizenship.