EDITORIAL - POGOs defy ban

As of yesterday, all Philippine offshore gaming operator firms and their state-created versions, the internet gaming licensees, were supposed to cease operations. All that the POGOs and IGLs are now authorized to do is to wind down their businesses until their year-end deadline to shut down completely, the Philippine Anti-Organized Crime Commission has pointed out. These include merely the settlement of taxes and property leases, for example, or the sale of office equipment, according to PAOCC officials.

The PAOCC has been conducting raids on POGOs, acting mostly on complaints about criminal activities such as human trafficking, torture and a wide range of cyberscams alongside the offshore gaming. PAOCC spokesman Winston Casio said POGOs have broken up into micro enterprises that continued to engage in offshore gaming as of yesterday, the first day of the ban on their operations.

Thanks to the years when POGOs proliferated, the Philippines has gained an unsavory reputation as an Asian cyberscam center, with all the criminal activities engendered by scam farms such as human trafficking and labor abuses. PAOCC officials say many of the micro offshore gaming and scam operations are now being run by Filipinos who learned the trade while working for POGOs. Chinese nationals also continue to finance underground offshore gaming operations, according to PAOCC.

Perhaps the POGO and IGL operators are emboldened by the belief that there is either weak political will or weak capability – or both – to enforce the ban. The government should disabuse them from this belief by  augmenting resources and stepping up efforts to put an end to offshore gaming and the social ills that it engenders.

PAOCC, the National Bureau of Investigation and the Philippine National Police are going after POGOs and IGLs, whose operations are deemed illegal beginning yesterday. The law enforcement agencies coordinate with other offices such as the Bureau of Immigration and local government units – those whose officials aren’t themselves involved in POGOs – in cracking down on offshore gaming.

With the offshore gaming and scam farms now operating at the micro level, more cyber sleuths, digital technology and other resources are needed. PAOCC officials have admitted that the task has become more complicated. They will need sufficient support to prevent the country from becoming an Asian center of cybercrime.