Court finds 17 Chinese guilty of cybersex crimes

ILOILO CITY, Philippines — The 17 Chinese found guilty for cybersex den operation in this city remain under the custody of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) as it waits for the court to order their transfer to the Bureau of Immigration.

Regional Trial Court Judge Victorino Maniba ruled that the foreigners violated the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, Cybercrime Prevention Act and the Revised Penal Code when they forced workers hired for a non-voice call center to engage in “lustful” conversations over the phone and do lascivious exhibitions of private body parts.

Each of the convicts was sentenced four to eight months in prison and ordered to pay a fine of P75,000 for each of the cases.

The 17 Chinese were arrested during a raid on Nov. 4, 2023 in Jaro, Iloilo City by operatives of the Iloilo City Police Office-City Intelligence Unit, Police Regional Anti-Cybercrime Unit-6 and Cybercrime Investigation and Coordinating Center.

Seized from them were several computer units, mobile phones, routers and SIM cards.

The raid came after a woman accused the convicts of recruiting her to engage in “lustful” conversations through mobile phones and to act as a “model” by doing lascivious exhibitions of her private body parts through a computer system with an artificial intelligence application.

She added that she was photographed while doing the lascivious acts.

According to the BJMP, the 17 remain under detention at a facility in Barangay Nanga in Pototan town while waiting for the court to order a transfer of custody to the Bureau of Immigration.

The 11-page decision earlier ordered the BJMP to transfer the custody of the 17 to the Bureau of Immigration “for the disposition of their immigration case upon full service of their sentence and upon full payment of the fine imposed by the court.”