The Bureau of Immigration (BI) announced the arrest of two foreigners from Taiwan and South Korea who are facing deportation for being fugitives from justice in their homelands.
In a statement, Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco said the aliens were arrested in separate operations conducted last week in the cities of Makati and Parañaque by operatives from the BI’s fugitive search unit (FSU) headed by Rendel Ryan Sy.
The two were identified as Taiwanese Li Ming Hsiu, 44, and South Korean Joo Han Wong, 39. who were arrested on March 5 and 6, respectively, and are presently detained at the BI warden facility in Taguig City while awaiting deportation.
Tansingco said Li and Joo will be deported to their home countries where they are wanted by authorities to stand trial for serious crimes. They will also be included in the BI blacklist to prevent them from re-entering the Philippines.
According to BI-FSU chief Sy, Liu is wanted in Taiwan due to an arrest warrant that was issued against him by the Taichung district prosecutor’s office for allegedly violating his country’s money laundering act.
Prosecutors alleged that Liu is a ranking of member of a syndicate involved in large-scale money laundering since last year when it operated multiple scamming centers in Taiwan and abroad that defrauded victims of more than P78 billion pesos through its fraudulent schemes.
As for Joo, the BI-Interpol unit disclosed that the South Korean became subject of an Interpol red notice after the Seoul Dongbu district court issued a warrant for his arrest based on charges that he engaged in cybercrime activities.
Joo allegedly conspired with other suspects in developing a computer program that was used to hack and illegally obtain personal information from over 66,500 personal messaging application accounts.
The victims’ data were eventually sold to a third party which used it to employ voice phishing and other telecom fraud activities on many victims.
Both Liu and Joo are already undocumented aliens as their passports were already revoked by their respective governments.
