The Bureau of Immigration on Sunday once again renewed its warning on the trafficking of Filipino workers to work as love scammers abroad.

BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco warned all aspiring overseas workers not to accept offers from unscrupulous individuals to work illegally in several Asian countries as call center agents.

This warning comes after the repatriation of 27 Filipinos from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, last 8 December after they were rescued by the Cambodian police from traffickers.

According to preliminary reports, 12 out of the 27 passengers left Zamboanga illegally by boat in order to avoid a formal immigration inspection. They supposedly left Zamboanga and traveled eleven hours to Sabah, Malaysia, before transferring to Cambodia.

While the other 14 victims all departed as regular tourists, claiming that they were travelling abroad for a holiday, one of the repatriates was even a government employee, while the others had either short-term travel, traveled with friends, partners, or employers, or were gainfully employed. Only one departed as a documented overseas Filipino worker but was supposedly bound for Palau and not Cambodia.

Tansingco said that the new batch of repatriates mostly left at the end of 2022 or the first half of 2023, which he said meant that the syndicate has not stopped receiving new recruits despite the numerous warnings sent out by the Philippine government.

The BI chief added that they warned about this syndicate as early as October last year. It has been over a year, and they still see victims being duped into accepting their fake offers.

The 27 victims described how they managed to flee their terrible experience overseas, where they were made to serve as elderly men's suitors in the UK.  Afterwards, their Chinese employers sold some of them to another company after they had endured mistreatment and torture at work.

Luckily, Cambodian police rescued them during their transfer after they were sold. They were later assisted by the Philippine Consulate in Phnom Penh.

"Imagine being a professional here but ending up being sold like a slave abroad," said Tansingco. "These are the real stories that we have been hearing every day, yet people continue to say yes to this," he stated.

The victims were assisted by officials from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, the Department of Migrant Workers, and the Department of Foreign Affairs after immigration clearance.