Bureau of Immigration (BI) officers at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) arrested a South Korean woman wanted by authorities in her country for involvement in fraudulent investment scams.
Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco said the 42-year-old passenger was stopped from leaving the country at the NAIA 3 terminal last June 18 when she was supposed to board a Cebu Pacific flight to Hanoi.
She was offloaded from her flight after the BI officer who processed her saw that the passenger prompted a positive hit in the derogatory check system indicating that she is a subject of a blue notice from the Interpol.
The woman’s name was, however, withheld pursuant to existing Interpol protocols on persons who are subjects of blue notices.
Tansingco bared that aside from being in the Interpol’s watchlist, the passenger’s passport was also reported as lost and stolen to the Interpol.
“She will thus be deported for being an undesirable and undocumented alien after which she will be placed in our blacklist and banned from re-entering the country,” the BI chief added.
According to the BI-Interpol, the woman is suspected of defrauding in 2019 many of her compatriots in an investment scam wherein she was able to entice the victims to deposit their money into her own bank account.
The victims were promised huge returns on their investments which the suspect claimed she would use as capital for her money lending business.
She reneged on her promised and the victims’ combined losses reportedly amounted to more than 385 million won, or roughly US$277,000.
Furthermore, from 2018 to 2019 the woman also duped 10 other victims with whom she opened a joint bank account after being promised they would recover their money, plus the interest, on a staggered basis every two months.
Instead, the suspect absconded with the victims’ money after the latter made an initial deposit of 60,000,000 won, or roughly US$43,000.
