Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) should avoid strangers who offer work abroad as call center agents with high salaries, Bureau of Immigration (BI) Commissioner Norman Tansingco warned on Wednesday, Oct. 18.

These strangers "will only make your lives miserable at the expense of your families who depend on you for financial support,” he pointed out. 

Tansingco's warning was issued after he learned of what happened to a female OFW who was recently repatriated from Laos where she worked in a “love scam” of a cybercrime syndicate without getting paid.

The OFW, who was not identified, worked in  Bahrain as “a legitimate domestic household worker for one year and eight months,” Tansingco said.

He said she was returning back to the Philippines two months ago when “during a layover of her return flight to Manila at the airport in Dubai, she was reportedly approached by a male stranger who offered her a job as a call center agent in Thailand with a monthly salary of P50,000."

“Lured by promise of a high paying job, the victim accepted the stranger’s offer and joined the latter in flying to Bangkok instead of going home to the Philippines,” he said.

 “Upon arriving in Bangkok, the victim narrated that she was transferred to Chiang Rai province in Thailand where they took a boat going to nearby Laos,” he also said.

However, when she was not paid while working in a “love scam,” the OFW ran away and sought the assistance of the Philippine embassy in Vientianne, he added.