DMW shutters illegal recruitment firm in Binondo

The Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) on Tuesday shut down an illegal recruitment agency in Manila offering nonexistent jobs overseas to unsuspecting individuals.

The DMW, along with officers from the Philippine National Police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, enforced the closure order on Maxilum Recruitment Agency in Binondo, Manila.

“We are here to shut down an agency that is illegally recruiting people to Japan, New Zealand, including Australia … It does not have a DMW license and they are scamming applicants,” DMW Migrant Workers Protection Bureau Director III Eric Dollete said.

He identified the agency owners as a Filipino woman named Celesti Maxilum and her Russian fiancé, Alex Curry.

The couple was arrested with their two armed bodyguards during an entrapment operation in Pasay City on March 25.

Dollete said the DMW has received around 40 complaints against Maxilum’s agency which recruited people through Tiktok.

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Of the 40 alleged victims, two were overseas Filipino workers from Kuwait who said they left their jobs after the suspect offered them work in New Zealand.

One of them was Mercy Limbo, a 52-year-old woman from Taguig, who had been working in Kuwait for 10 months when she was offered a factory worker position in New Zealand by Maxilum with a P260,000 monthly salary.

After paying a placement fee of P65,000, Limbo said she waited for eight months in vain, prompting her to go to authorities.