Authorities claim that fugitives and fraud center workers have been receiving plastic surgery services from secret hospitals in the Philippines to help them avoid arrest.
After police raided the first one in Manila’s southwestern cities in May, a police official told the BBC, two of these illegal hospitals was close “in the coming days.”
Two months ago, the doctor in Pasay City seized hair transplant equipment, dental implants, and skin-whitening IV spills.
According to Winston John Casio, a spokesman for the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission ( PAOCC), “you can create an entirely new person out of those.”
According to officials, the two illegal institutions being looked into are four times as big as the one in Pasay.
Their clients reportedly include those from virtual casinos, who are working in the Philippines improperly, Mr Casio said.
The online casinos or Pogos ( Philippine Online Gaming Operations ) cater to players in mainland China, where gambling is illegal.
However, according to the police, Pogos have been used as a cover for legal actions like human trafficking and phone scams.
None of the three doctors in the Pasay attack had a job license in the Philippines, including two from Vietnam and one from China, a Taiwanese doctor, and a Taiwanese nurse.
Officials also found a dialysis system, suggesting that the service, which was about 400 sqm, offered several medical procedures in addition to plastic surgery.
” They look like normal centers on the outside, but once you enter, you’ll become shocked by the type of technology they have”, Mr Casio said.
” These Pogo hospitals do n’t ask for the proper identification cards… You could be a fugitive, or you could be an illegal alien in the Philippines”, he said.
Authorities received information about the existence of the improper clinic in Pasay City.
Pogos flourished under Rodrigo Duterte, a former president who sought helpful ties with China during his six-year expression that ended in 2022.
However, his son Ferdinand Marcos Jr has mounted a crackdown on Pogos, citing their legal connections.
The president has given us a policy to go after con fields because of how they have been targeted by large numbers of people from all over the globe, according to Mr. Casio, and he does not want the Philippines to be called a “scam hotspot.”
Immigration officials detained a suspected Chinese mafia member in December 2022 who reportedly underwent plastic surgery to fend off detection, but the attempt was ineffective. Such situations may be linked to the underground institutions, Mr Casio said.
After a Pogo fraud center was discovered close to her office, Alice Guo, the president of a weary area north of the capital, was recently under fire.
After being questioned by regulators about her baby information, she has also been accused of spying for China.