7 ISRAELIS NABBED FOR FAKE ONLINE TRADING FLEE

SEVEN of the eight Israelis arrested earlier this month for allegedly operating a multi-million dollar investment scam at the Clark Freeport Zone, Pampanga have left the country despite pending criminal cases, while the other one was intercepted by airport immigra

Marc Red Mariñas, Bureau of

associate commissioner and port operations division chief, told The ManilaTimes on Wednesday that

in preventing the departure of the Israelis as there were no formal

- reau and no hold-departure order (HDO) was issued by the courts.

BI sources earlier told TheTimes that the seven Israelis left the country after they were allowed to post bail, using newly issued passports by the Israeli Embassy.

Their old passports were held by the Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG).

One BI source explained that even without an HDO, the suspects should not have been allowed to leave because they used new passports without arrival stamps.

“Their passports should have

of visa admission [ by the BI] from the old passport but instead they were allowed to leave without visa admission. Some immigration officers are involved in their illegal departure. It’s good that the other one was intercepted,” the source added.

Mariñas agreed that the seven Israelis should not have been allowed to leave if their new passports did not have arrival stamps, but pointed out that immigration records indicated otherwise.

“We extracted their records and it showed that they used their old passports,” he said, adding that the arrested suspect was the only one who used a new passport without an arrival stamp, which was the reason he was not allowed to leave the country.

In the case of the seven Israelis who were able to leave, Mariñas said that they were properly documented and possessed a “special work permit” issued by the BI, valid for three months.

“They have no derogatory records in our file,” he said. “So there’s no reason for us to stop them from leaving, much more that no case was filed against them [by the PNP-ACG]. There is a Supreme Court ruling on that,” Mariñas pointed out.

BI records showed that the seven Israelies left the country on June 15 while their arrested compatriot tried to leave a day after.

The arrested suspect, Mariñas said, was sent to the BI Detention Center at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City.

The eight Israelis, along with 482 call center agents in the alleged online scam operation, were arrested by the PNP-ACG during a raid on June 5 at the Clark Freeport Zone in Pampanga.

The raids were conducted on the strength of search warrants for violation of Republic Act 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012 in relation to Article 315 of the Revised Penal Code or estafa issued by Judge Andres Bartolome Soriano of the Makati City Regional Trial Court Branch 148.

The search warrant was issued based on the complaints of Australians Jan Theresa Bedggood, Robert Wayne Smith, Juningsih Welford and South African Barend Nicholaas Prinsloo, who all claimed to be scam victims.

Four of the respondents were identified as Gal Manobla, Natali Grin, Isahy Shaulov and Noa Hofman. They were described as operators of the International Branding Development Marketing Inc. based in Clark.

According to the PNP, the company had been operating for the past 30 months but changed its company name a number of times.