Philippine authorities have uncovered secret hospitals that provide plastic surgery for fugitives and scammers looking to avoid arrest, according to reports.
“You can create an entirely new person out of those,” said Winston John Casio, a spokesman for the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission.
Police raided one such hospital in the southern suburbs of Manila, leading to the discovery of a second hospital. Authorities will shut down both hospitals “in the coming weeks,” Casio said.
An anonymous tip alerted authorities to an unlicensed hospital operating in Pasay, located just five miles south of Manila. An intelligence officer confirmed the hospital’s existence to the commission, although it was initially believed to be a “stand-alone” operation.
Authorities arrested two Vietnamese doctors, one Chinese doctor, one Chinese pharmacist, and a Vietnamese nurse. None of them held licenses to practice medicine in the country.
The hospitals are linked to the country’s growing “Philippines offshore gaming operator” (POGO) industry, which officials have alleged has ties to China. POGO presents itself as an online casino but has actually served as a front for a “scam center” with hundreds of workers, including Chinese nationals.
The hospitals allegedly help POGO center workers completely change their appearances, including hair transplants, dentures, and skin whitening sessions, if they need to disappear and evade authorities. The commission found tools for these operations and many more during a raid in May, Casio said.
“They had an operating table, and other aesthetic alteration procedures such as dental implants, hair restoration, facial rejuvenation, and so on,” Casio said. “If you bring all of these together, you can create an entirely new person out of those.”
“We know for a fact that these POGO hospitals have no licenses and permits from the proper government regulatory agencies,” he added.
Casio emphasized that these hospitals only assist POGO workers and not other types of criminals. He suggested that a “good number” of these hospitals may exist across the country.
The commission will continue investigating the full scope of these secret hospitals, including the number of locations and patients, who also assume fake identities after leaving. The Bureau of Immigration will assist in the investigation.
The POGO centers have become a high-profile concern for the Philippines, which worries about widespread criminal activity. The mayor of Bamban in May found herself in the middle of a scandal when the Bureau of Immigration opened an investigation into whether she had illegally used her position to run for office.
Officials alleged that Mayor Alice Guo could in fact be a Chinese national who helped facilitate the establishment of the POGO scam center in Bamban, which facilitated “love scams” where scam workers adopted fake identities to establish romantic relationships online and extort money from victims.
Casio, the spokesman for the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission, argued that handling the POGO centers remains a chief concern due to possible connections between the local operations and an “immense” transnational crime operation.