PAOCC sees link between e-gambling, online lending apps
Cybercrime law enforcers have been recording at least 156,000 complaints of online crimes a month, with most cases involving lending apps, an official of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) said on Wednesday.
“The complaints they receive range from online lending, online scamming and online selling [with scamming], among others,” PAOCC Executive Director Gilberto Cruz said at a forum.
“But the majority of these cases are due to harassment brought by online lending apps, followed by online scamming,” Cruz added, noting that the PAOCC alone was currently handling 15,000 cases involving online lending applications.
Cruz said they have also observed a connection between online gambling and the use of digital lending apps.
In some cases, the victims were overseas Filipino workers who lost their savings through online gambling and then borrowed money from online lending apps.
As for the complaints about harassment, Cruz said that Filipino employees hired by foreign principals, particularly Chinese, usually start demanding payment from borrowers a week after the release of their loans.
Harassment cases
“If victims fail to pay them, they will be harassed using their personal accounts, which they surrendered to online lending operators. These accounts were used as leverage against the victims,” Cruz said.
“The operators will use your pictures and contacts to call your coworkers, and because of this, we recorded many incidents of suicide,” he added.
The PAOCC official said that so far, six victims have already died in connection with depression arising from their addiction to online gambling, which is medically deemed to be a mental health issue.
There are already concrete proposals pending in both chambers of the newly convened 20th Congress dealing with online gambling, but none have specifically addressed online lending apps.
Senators Juan Miguel Zubiri and Sherwin Gatchalian have separately filed bills seeking to outlaw online gambling and imposing stricter regulation rules, including a prohibition on the use of e-wallets for payments to gambling platforms and raising the minimum age of players from 18 to 21.
