According to the World Daily News: A residential fire in Batasan Hills, Quezon City, inadvertently revealed a suspected illegal Philippine offshore gaming operator (POGO) "guerrilla base".
The fire broke out in the early morning, awakening nearby residents with fierce flames, and quickly spread throughout the building.
After the fire was extinguished, investigators found alarming clues inside the house: thousands of SIM cards, multiple computers, mobile phone mass texting devices, and a Chinese citizen's passport.
The Quezon City Police Department (QCPD) indicated that these items might be related to some form of underground fraud or online gambling activities.
Colonel Glenn Silvio of the QCPD said, "This could be a guerrilla operation started by someone after being laid off by a company, or it might be part of a group that isn't even registered locally."
The authorities are particularly vigilant about the mass texting devices found at the scene, which were apparently used to send out scam messages in bulk.
Silvio explained, "The operation works by one person entering messages into a computer, then broadcasting them via a mobile texting device, sending a message to multiple recipients with SIM cards, a typical mass scamming technique."
The police also found a notebook at the scene, its pages filled with text templates of suspected scam messages.
Silvio noted, "It appears that so-called 'SMS scam training' was also conducted here, with a set of social media message scripts or templates available for copying."
The police are actively searching for the Chinese man whose passport was left at the scene. Silvio stated that they are currently cooperating with the Immigration Bureau and the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission (PAOCC) to investigate whether the involved Chinese citizen has a criminal record.
