Poe urges prosecution of scammers amid ‘dramatic’ hike in scam calls

Senator Grace Poe is calling for the immediate prosecution of scammers to curb the persistent problem in the Philippines. 

In a statement, Poe called the “dramatic” increase in scam calls in the first three months of 2025 as “disturbing” considering that the SIM Registration law and the POGO ban are currently in place. 

“By this time, we hope wrongdoers are already feeling the mettle of the law and unsettling those hatching vile scamming plans. Scammers should be tried in court and punished. If no one is held accountable, perpetrators will be emboldened to continue with their illegal activities,” she said. 

Apart from this, Poe, author of the SIM Registration Law, called on relevant agencies, telecommunication companies, and other concerned stakeholders to continuously come up with innovative solutions to tackle call and text scams.

“Eliminating scams or at least paring them down to a minimum will require being smarter than the scammer,” Poe said. 

Should these scamming activities continue, the senator warned that more Filipinos will be victims of identity theft and financial losses.

“While not a silver bullet to the scamming menace, the law that we passed can go a long way in fighting cybercrimes. It has institutionalized stricter measures on SIM use and legal basis for penalizing its misuse,” Poe said. 

In a Super Radyo dzBB interview Monday, Department of Information and Communications Technology Undersecretary Jeffrey Ian Dy warned against scammers who ask for various information from the victims. 

“Kasi tatanungin ka nila ng iba’t ibang impormasyon mo para magamit nila ‘yan for their databases,” Dy said. 

Data from caller identification service provider Whoscall showed that a total of 6,157,517 text short message service (SMS) scams were reported in the Philippines in 2024

In February, Palace Press Officer Undersecretary Claire Castro raised the need to amend the SIM Registration law to strengthen government’s intervention against scamming.

It was in 2022 when President Ferdinand ''Bongbong'' Marcos Jr. signed into law a measure seeking the registration of Subscriber Identity Module, which aims to promote accountability in the use of SIMs.

The SIM Registration Act or Republic Act 11934 seeks to end crimes using the platform including text and online scams by regulating the sale and the use of SIMs through mandating registration to end-users.

In June 2024, the National Telecommunications Commission made a commitment to address the concerns on POGO-related scamming activities as it admitted that the SIM Registration Law, which it said is not a "silver bullet" against messaging scams, continues to face several challenges in its implementation.—AOL, GMA Integrated News