Bureau of Immigration (BI) agents at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 3 intercepted two women Monday who were attempting to travel to Bangkok using fraudulent claims of being co-workers on vacation.

According to the report from the Immigration Protection and Border Enforcement Section (I-PROBES), the women — ages 25 and 31 — presented themselves as call center representatives for a business process outsourcing company in Quezon City and claimed they were on a leisure trip.

However, inconsistencies in their travel documents raised suspicions among immigration officials.

Further questioning revealed the women were not actually co-workers as they admitted they had been hired to work as customer service representatives in Laos, where they were promised a monthly salary of P50,000.

They also confessed to paying P3,000 each to a fixer they found on social media to create falsified travel documents to support their fabricated story of a vacation with colleagues.

BI commissioner Atty. Joel Anthony Viado issued a warning to the public about fraudulent employment schemes operating in several Asian countries as these schemes often target Filipinos seeking overseas work as customer service representatives.

He added that syndicates lure victims with promises of high-paying call center jobs, but often force them into illegal activities such as online scams and cryptocurrency fraud, under exploitative and harsh working conditions.

“We urge Filipinos to exercise caution when accepting overseas employment offers, particularly those that appear too good to be true,” Viado said.

“A lot of these alleged call center jobs end up being fronts for massive scam operations that take advantage of and put our countrymen in danger,” he added.

The two women were immediately turned over to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking for further investigation.