Camarines Sur 2nd district Rep. LRay Villafuerte wants the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) to spearhead an operation against illegal gambling sites together with the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (PAGCOR).

Villafuerte made this pitch to DICT Secretary Ivan John Uy during a recent hearing of the powerful Commission on Appointments (CA), of which the solon is the majority leader.

“We just want to ask your commitment, sana kayo po ang mag-spearhead (hopefully you will spearhead it) with PAGCOR and NBI not only to shut down the sites because you can shut down the sites eh (but), in 5 minutes they can put these up again," he told Uy during the CA hearing.

"But my point is cases have to be filed because you can actually log in and put money in a wallet and gamble," Villafuerte stressed.

The Bicolano reckoned that it's incumbent upon the DICT, PAGCOR and NBI to join forces and crack down on these illicit sites.

"If it’s unregulated, unlicensed it’s prone to fraud. You know you can put in money and you want to play but it’s fraudulent they can just shut down the websites," he said.

The ranking lawmaker further said billions of pesos are being lost because of these illegal sites.

"We have received a lot of texts about jackpots, alleged jackpots, about all of these and ... I asked my staff to investigate this....All the texts that we have been receiving are coming from illegal, unlicensed, unregulated companies and websites,” he said.

“So, you know, actually you can easily know who these people are. So unfortunately nothing is being done about this problem about illegal online gaming sites,” Villafuerte told Uy.

In response, the DICT chief assured Villafuerte that his office will set up such a task force with the NBI and PAGCOR to run after these illegal online gaming operators.

“We will immediately set up a unit in order to address this in coordination with the other agencies like PAGCOR,” said Uy.