Police in the Philippines rescued over 1,000 people forced to fake online romances from a vast scam center. [Image: Shutterstock.com]

Like The Tinder Swindler but on an industrial scale, police in the Philippines have rescued over 1,000 people forced to fake online romances from a scam center run by human traffickers.

According to BBC News, among those the police freed from the center in the Philippine municipality of Bambam were 838 Filipinos, 202 Chinese nationals, and 73 others.

They all owe their freedom to an escaped Vietnamese man who police said “showed signs of torture, including electrocution.” The man scaled the scam center wall, swam a river, and hid out on a farm before he tipped the police off.

asking about their day and “what they had eaten for their last meal”

The traffickers lured the unnamed man to the Philippines from Vietnam with the offer of a job as a chef. Upon arrival, however, he joined the other inmates forced by the human trafficking ring to build online romances with victims using fake identities. The would–be chef and others would check in with the unsuspecting lonely hearts, asking about their day and “what they had eaten for their last meal.”

Police raided the center furnished with two search warrants against the Chinese-owned Zun Yuan Technology Inc, seizing firearms and live ammunition.

A spokesman for the Philippines Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission stated the scam center contained “36 separate buildings, each three to seven stories high.”

Human traffickers are luring thousands of victims to Southeast Asia countries like the Philippines with promises of jobs, confiscating their passports and mobile phones on arrival and forcing them into elaborate online scams, including dating, casinos, and crypto schemes. In 2023, the International Organization estimated criminal gangs had illegally trafficked “tens of thousands” of people to work in scam compounds in the region.