MANILA – A ranking official of the Central Bank (CB) of the Philippines warned about the existence of an international syndicate using credit cards to defraud and victimize banks and remittance agents in the country.
Elvira Ditching-Lorica, the deputy head of the CB financial consumer affairs group, revealed the syndicate, which has not yet been identified, has already victimized a remittance agent based in Cebu City in the Visayas.
Lorica also warned the public against job offers from foreign companies whose identities and credentials could not be verified because they might end up in frauds and similar financial scams.
She added the suspects employ credit card cash advance transactions using the Philippine financial system.
Lorica said the scam starts with an Internet advertisement for a job as financial agent by offering large commissions for facilitating unspecified transactions.
In the case of the agent already victimized, the CB official said he was instructed by his employer to retrieve a cash remittance from the US from its partner based in the Philippines.
Lorica also said the agent was then told to transfer the funds to another recipient abroad through another remittance agent.
The discrepancy surfaced when the US remittance agent complained the cash remittance was done using a credit card and that the original sender had stopped payment for the transaction, Lorica said.
By that time, the remittance agent in the Philippines has already advanced the cash and that the cash has been sent abroad, she said, in this case to a recipient in Russia.
“This often happens very fast usually within 24 hours,” Lorica pointed out. “By the time the remittance agent in the Philippines is informed, he already has been defrauded of cash.”
Lorica expressed suspicion the credit card used to transfer cash was either stolen or a case of the so-called “identity theft” which is rampant in the US and perpetrated by an international crime syndicate.
She explained that the credit card transfer was still considered a credit and when the transaction was cancelled by the original remittance agent abroad, no cash actually came out of that agent.
According to Lorica, when they investigated they found the Australian company that hired the Filipino agent was already gone from the Internet. And when they disappear, there is no easy way of tracing them because they come and go, she added.
At the same time, Lorica said the transactions are usually in small amounts which are just below the limit that would trigger the alarm at the Anti-Money Laundering Council (Amlac) in the Philippines.
On transactions involving big amounts, Lorica explained the syndicate will usually break these into small amounts to escape the attention of the Amlac.
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