BI intercepts Pinay using fake foreign passport bought over Tiktok

The Bureau of Immigration (BI) intercepted a Filipina trafficking victim who allegedly presented a counterfeit Belgian passport that she bought through social media app Tiktok.

In a statement released on Saturday, the BI said the Filipina attempted to board a Kuwait Airlines flight to Ercan, Cyprus at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) Terminal 1 and claimed she was transiting from Kuwait to Izmir, Turkey.

The immigration officers submitted her documents for forensic screening after flagging several inconsistencies in her passport and arrival stamps.

The screening results revealed that her passport, residence card, and immigration stamps were all fake.

The victim initially insisted that she was a Belgian national. But she eventually confessed that she was a former overseas Filipino worker with a Philippine passport to avoid arrest as an illegal alien.

She was found to be previously deported from Israel due to the lack of a working visa, according to a report on 24 Oras Weekend on Sunday.

According to the victim, she bought the fake EU passport on Tiktok for over P700,000 so she could travel visa-free to multiple countries. She also said that she was promised a job as a caregiver with a P180,000 per month salary in Greece.

The victim was turned over to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking to file charges against her recruiter. —Jiselle Casucian and Jon Viktor Cabuenas/DVM/KG, GMA Integrated News