Korean wanted for telco fraud nabbed in Clark airport
CLARK FREEPORT --- The Bureau of Immigration (BI) said its officers at Clark International Airport (CRK) have arrested a South Korean wanted by authorities in Seoul for involvement in telecommunications fraud.
BI’s border control and intelligence unit
(BCIU) identified 35-year-old Lee Seunggon, who was intercepted in Clark on Monday.
Lee was bound to Incheon aboard a Philippine Airlines flight, the agency said.
The BCIU said the Korean was arrested and stopped from leaving after the immigration officer who processed him saw that his name prompted a positive hit in the BI’s database of aliens with derogatory records.
Aside from being wanted in his country, Lee is also in the wanted list of the BI which filed a deportation case against him in June last year for being an undesirable alien.
“We will thus deport him as soon as we have secured the necessary clearances for his departure. He was already included in our blacklist to prevent him from reentering the country,” BI chief Norman Tansingco said.
He added that Lee will remain at the BI warden facility in Camp Bagong Diwa, Taguig
City before his deportation.
Information provided by the BCIU’s Interpol team revealed that a warrant for Lee’s arrest was issued nearly a year ago by the Suwon district court in Korea.
An Interpol red notice was also issued against him three months later which became the basis for the BI to slap him with a deportation case.
Korean authorities alleged that between March to May 2021, Lee was a member of a voice phishing syndicate that made random calls to victims to whom they introduced themselves as lenders of financial institutions.
The syndicate reportedly enticed the victims to transfer money to the suspects’bank accounts by falsely offering low interest rates in exchange for timely payment of outstanding debts and processing fees.