The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. (Pagcor) said that about 255 former offshore gaming operations, previously known as “POGOs,” may have been operating illegally in the country.
Alejandro Tengco, Pagcor chairman and chief executive officer, said these 255 POGOs had their overseas gaming licenses revoked in September 2023 due to their involvement in criminal activities.
“When I was appointed as chairman and CEO of Pagcor, we had more or less than 298 licenses at that time. After some studies, we found that many of those who have this license were not operating as overseas gaming,” Tengco said in a radio interview.
“They used Pagcor's license for criminal activities, such as credit card fraud, investment fraud, cryptocurrency fraud, love match and love scam fraud,” he added.
To recall, Tengco implemented reforms in the offshore gaming sector late last year to eliminate operators engaged in activities not sanctioned by Pagcor.
To differentiate legitimate operators from illegal POGOs, Pagcor now refers to its overseas gaming operators as IGLs, or Internet Gaming Licensees.
With the reforms, the number of overseas gaming licensees has dropped significantly from 298 POGOs in 2023 to just 46 IGLs.
However, out of these 46 IGLs, Tengco said that three of them have since been suspended, resulting in a total of 43 active licenses today.
Since key information on former POGOs are held by Pagcor, Tengco also said the agency discreetly shares details about their identities and locations with the authorities.
“We are pursuing them for the time being,” Tengco said.
Meanwhile, the PAGCOR chief clarified that the recent incident involving a raid on a POGO hub in Pampanga pertained to a former POGO and not an IGL.
Moreover, while Pagcor granted an IGL to an operator in Bamban, Tarlac, Tengco said the raided premises were not associated with the building declared by the licensed operator.
In a related development, Tengco cautioned that imposing a total ban IGLs could inadvertently push lawful operators underground that would exacerbate existing problems.
“If this happens, it would become harder for us to monitor them, and the number of illegal operators would grow and pose a bigger headache to our law enforcement authorities,” Tengco said in a statement.
“On top of these, the government will lose potential revenues of more than P20 billion annually, without any guarantee that illegal activities will stop,” he added.
Tengco believes that when legitimate operators are banned, they will simply hide and vanish, bringing with them their gaming equipment like computers and machines and simply continue to operate without government monitoring and supervision.
“We have no guarantee that, once we ban the legitimate operators, they will simply close shop and return to their countries of origin where they are likely to face prosecution and jail, or worse,” he said.
“So they will just go underground here in the Philippines and continue operating,” the Pagcor chief said. “Worse, they could join those who are engaged in illegal activities like scamming, hacking and other cybercrimes, which would cause bigger problems to us.”
“Once they are underground, we lose control over them,” Tengco said.
Despite this, Tengco said the government's gaming regulator will respect whatever decision Congress will make on the issue.
“It is the prerogative of our lawmakers to outlaw IGLs, if they believe it will solve our problems.
“However, for us, the real problem are the criminal syndicates masquerading as POGOs. It is only through intensified law enforcement and the cooperation of all sectors that we would be able to address the problem of criminality,” Tengco said.