Cybercrime law enforcers have been recording at least 156,000 complaints of online crime a month, with most cases involving lending apps, Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) Executive Director Gilberto Cruz recently said at a forum.
“The complaints they receive range from online lending, online scamming, and online selling [with scamming], among others,” he said. “But majority of these cases are due to harassment brought by online lending apps, followed by online scamming,” Cruz added, noting that PAOCC was currently handling 15,000 cases involving online lending applications.
He said they also observed a connection between online gambling and the use of digital lending apps, citing cases where the victims were overseas Filipino workers who lost their savings through online gambling and then borrowed money from online lending apps.
Most cases involve the victims being harassed using their personal accounts, which they surrender to online lending operators who use the accounts as leverage against their victims. “The operators will use your picture and contacts to call your coworkers, and because of this, we recorded many incidents of suicide,” Cruz said.
He 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 proposals from both chambers of the convened 20th Congress dealing with online gambling, but none have specifically addressed online lending apps.
Online gambling and online lending have these activities and options more accessible to Filipinos, and while not illegal, have been in dire need of tighter monitoring and regulation to ensure that it is not abused, both by the providers of the service, and those who choose to partake of it. If it is up to the government to ensure that crimes don’t take place, it also has a duty to protect the public from services, whether online or not, that are leading to the destruction of lives and families.*
