Hontiveros: POGO ‘big boss’ could not have operated without help from gov't

Senator Risa Hontiveros on Friday warned that officials should not become complacent with the arrest of alleged POGO “kingpin” Lyu Dong, saying that he would not have been able to establish his network without help from people in government.

Hontiveros is the chairperson of the Senate Committee on Women, Children, Family Relations and Gender Equality, which is looking into illegal POGOs in the country.

“Sa dami ng mga in-operate na POGO hub ni Lyu Dong, hindi niya ito pwede nagawa ng walang kumanlong na kawani ng gobyerno. I hope that we can also identify the Filipino associates of Lyu Dong,” Hontiveros said in a statement.

(With the number of POGOs Lyu Dong operates, he could not have achieved this without support from government officials. I hope that we can also identify the Filipino associates of Lyu Dong.)

“There are bigger bosses out there. Dapat natin silang mahuli, at dapat silang managot sa kanilang mga krimen laban sa napakaraming inosenteng tao,” she said.

(There are bigger bosses out there. We should arrest them and they should face their crimes against innocent people.)

Authorities on Thursday evening arrested Lyu Dong, whose real name may be Lin Xunhan. He is allegedly a “big boss” of the raided POGO firm Lucky South 99 in Porac, Pampanga.

His arrest was was due to the combined efforts of the Bureau of Immigration, the Department of Justice, the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP), the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking and the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC).

Earlier, the PAOCC said Lyu Dong may be labeled as the “kingpin of POGOs” as he supposedly established a network of scam operations or scam farms across five regions after arriving in the country in 2016.

Other ‘big bosses’

As she commended the law enforcement agencies over the arrest, Hontiveros also expressed hope that Dong’s arrest will also lead to the arrest of other “big bosses” such as Duanren Wu, Zhang Jie, and Huang Zhiyang.

Wu is also being linked to the Porac POGO hub while Zhang Jie was the one who allegedly booked four rooms at a hotel in Indonesia for dismissed Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice Guo and her siblings when they left the country.

They are both respondents in the qualified human trafficking complaint filed against Cassandra Li Ong, the authorized representative of the Lucky South 99.

Meanwhile, Huang Zhiyang has been identified by PAOCC as the “boss of all bosses” of POGOs in the country. He has been issued an arrest warrant by a Pasig court in relation to the qualified human trafficking case against Guo, to which he is a respondent.

“[Lyu Dong’s] arrest brings us much closer to our goal of seeking justice for the victims of crimes related to POGOs and scam hubs, and accountability from public officials who enabled and tolerated these crimes,” Hontiveros said.

She also noted that her committee earlier identified Lyu Dong and his connection to  others behind the establishment of scam hubs in the country.  — RSJ, GMA Integrated News